Negative Security Assurance Audiences

Despite Ambassador Brooks' statement to the 2009 Carnegie opening panel that “No-first-use is the least interesting of all the issues we’ll talk about in the next two days, and I haven’t looked at tomorrow’s agenda,” it’s back in a big way. Survival’s October/November back and forth on the issue helped draw attention to what is being reported as one of the key sticking points in the now delayed Nuclear Posture Review. One of the developments emerging in the debate are potential options that can move away from calculated ambiguity without adopting a complete No First Use (NFU) pledge.  These calls for a middle ground between the two are stem from both political and substantive concerns.

On the political front, Mort Halperin’s Survival article advocated for a nuclear weapons statement of purpose (discussed in detail below) accompanied by a revamping of our negative security assurance agreement.  He argues this approach “avoids much, if not all, of the political fallout that would result from a no-first-use pledge” which “can and should be put off for another day” because of the Obama administration’s ambitious agenda to get 3 treaties (START, CTBT, FMCT) in the first term and the “very serious domestic political storm a president would confront” by seeking said pledge. Likewise, PONI documented the Evans/Kawaguchi co-chaired ICNND commission's decision to call for a “sole purpose” doctrine during the “minimization” phase until 2025 and then complete global NFU after due because they acknowledged that:

We would prefer that sooner rather than later, such declaratory “sole purpose” statements be hardened into unequivocal “no first use” commitments, but acknowledge that there has been an issue in the past as to whether such commitments have been seriously attended.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lewis recently crafted a formulation very similar to Halperin’s and argued that NFU pledges can suffer from similar credibility problems to calculated ambiguity pledges and fall prey to the unproductive “what if” game.

A common threat among many of the multi-faceted efforts to construct an approach that gets at NFU without making an official declaration is the role of negative security assurances (NSA). Initially announced by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in 1978 and then modified in 1995, the current U.S. negative security assurance pledge officially submitted to the UN in 1995 reads:

It is important that all parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons fulfil their obligations under the Treaty. In that regard, consistent with generally recognized principles of international law, parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must be in compliance with these undertakings in order to be eligible for any benefits of adherence to the Treaty.
The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or other troops, its allies, or on a State towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon State. [emphasis mine]

Usually, the second paragraph is the only one quoted but as will be discussed below the first paragraph also has important relevance to the discussion of reaffirming NSA commitments. President Clinton reiterated this pledge in 1997 in Presidential Decision Memorandum 60. In the Bush Administration, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher also repeated this NSA with the subsequent clarification:

We will do whatever is necessary to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its allies, and its interests. If a weapon of mass destruction is used against the United States or its allies, we will not rule out any specific type of military response

This type of qualification by the Bush administration produced substantial debate about whether efforts to try to deter countries like North Korea aiding countries and terrorist groups with WMDs and related materials were consistent with our past negative security assurances. This potential perceived backsliding likely helps contribute to why the Strategic Posture Commission found that

The United States should reiterate its commitments to NPT parties as stated in the agreed positive and negative security assurances, as they were qualified by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

And one of the findings that the CFR Task Force co-chairs called special attention to was to:

Reaffirm support for the agreed positive and negative security assurances that the United States has made to nonnuclear NPT states.

Taken as a standalone proposition, reaffirming the 1995 Negative Security Assurance as worded would likely not prove to be terribly controversial. Taken in the context of the Halperin and Lewis proposals, the majority of the debate would likely focus on whether it was be politically and substantively valuable to issue a limited statement of fact for nuclear weapons and whether the U.S. should accept the fact of mutual vulnerability with Russia and China. 

That does not mean, however, that negative assurances are not important. For starters, they are an important component of security for non-nuclear weapons states who very well may be concerned about the strength of pledge from the US (and other NWS).  Additionally, negative security assurances show up on the list, even if not at the CTBT/FMCT type level, of important steps that the United States and others can take to help to shore up the nonproliferation regime.

In analyzing how to effectively reaffirm U.S. negative security assurances, particularly should it be accompanied by efforts to move away from calculated ambiguity, there are a few important points to consider:

1. Collusion—As stated above, one of the caveats in the 1995 NSA is an “invasion or any other attack carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon State.” In some respects, a statement of fact that nuclear weapons are maintained to deter and respond to a nuclear attack on the US, its forces, and its allies obviates the need for much of this exemption because nuclear weapons would not exist to deter conventional or non-nuclear WMD threats.  While the debate about whether nuclear weapons are important to deter chemical and biological threats will be a serious one as evidenced by the Tertrais and Payne articles in Survival, there is another slightly distinct issue that deserves consideration: what would be in the U.S. toolbox to try to prevent, for example, countries like North Korea shipping problematic technology to countries like Syria, Burma, or even colluding with a terrorist organization.  Increased emphasis on counterproliferation efforts like the MTCR and the PSI would probably be part of the puzzle but both are more efforts to physically prevent sending and receiving sensitive technologies than they are to create psychological restraint in the mind of potential proliferators.  Proponents of moving away from calculated ambiguity would likely argue that "all options on the table" threats are at best not credible and at worst another redline to tempt Kim Jong Il to cross as it related to preventing the spread of dangerous materials and technologies.  Opponents would likely argue they serve a valuable role in trying to dissuade dangerous countries and groups from undertaking this behavior.  In the world of a revised NSA that strikes the "association or alliance" caveat, the administration will need to think hard about how best to tackle trying stop the spread of WMD and related technology from nuclear states to non-nuclear weapons states who now have an unconditional guarantee against U.S. nuclear attack assuming they can meet the compliance test.

2. The allies and the non-nuclear umbrella- It is worthwhile to point out that the nearly identical Halperin and Lewis formulations of the revised NSA do not contain a reference to allies. While both refer to nuclear attacks on “our friends and allies” in the statement of fact about nuclear weapons, there is not really a way to insert “and our allies and friends” in a revised negative assurance that basically says the U.S. won't attack non-nuclear weapons states with nuclear weapons.  That is not to say allies are automatically hung out to dry because they aren't mentioned but that explaining our new declaratory policy will require explaining peeling back not only nuclear protection against nuclear first strike and chemical and biological attacks, it will also eliminate the "association or alliance" caveat which could unnerve allies concerned about unfriendly non-nuclear weapon states gaining incentive to collude with nuclear weapons states such as North Korea, especially on chemical on biological weapons which would not be covered under the "nuclear nonproliferation obligations" of the compliance clause and would likely be easier and perhaps more desirable for potentially unfriendly neighbors to acquire.  As the progressive ICNDD final reported noted when referring to NFU declarations in general:

It is important, nonetheless, that those allies be given very firm assurances that they will not be exposed to unacceptable risk from other sources, including especially chemical and biological weapons. [emphasis mine]

This obstacle is not insurmountable but it does require serious attention from the U.S. should this NFU light strategy be adopted. In the same way that extended nuclear deterrence needs to be tailored to the specific needs and threat perceptions of various U.S. allies, removing the nuclear blanket from the protection of our allies against chemical and biological weapons, as a result of the nuclear purpose statement of fact and the elimination of the "alliance or association" caveat, will place an increased premium on working with allies to understand how they can be assured from the possibility of chemical and biological attacks which represent an easier, albeit still difficult, capability for a country to acquire and can represent tangible threats to key "umbrella allies" like Japan who was hit by the by the 1995 sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway.  Because a revised negative security assurance, particularly in combination with the nuclear statement of fact and/or a mutual vulnerability statement, is an effort to help reduce the salience of nuclear weapons is precisely the reason that assuring our allies on such a package will be critical.  The roll-out process in particular will be critical.  This is not a band-aid to be ripped off quickly. Minimizing the shock value of losing how much the nuclear umbrella covers will require thorough consultations and briefings with our allies to explain the reasons behind our decisions, how we plan to assure them, and solicitation of their feedback on how they can best be assured from a wide array of possible threats. 

3. Compliance—This compliance questions is not a new one and probably not one that should be publicly clarified by U.S. officials should they make this new package of statements.  It is, however, something that deserves some important attention.  The 1995 US NSA included in the preceding paragraph that “parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must be in compliance with these undertakings in order to be eligible for any benefits of adherence to the Treaty” which establishes the precedent for compliance being a precondition for U.S. negative assurances.  The Halperin and Lewis formulations read a little bit different in that they refer to “compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations” which could be read as an expansion of compliance requirements to include obligations beyond the NPT itself.  That could be good or bad but working through how that could or should be interpreted is important. With regards to NPT compliance itself, there also remain a lot of unanswered questions. For starters, who determines compliance?  Some possibilities include the United States, the the IAEA BoG and the Security Council, each of which have a number of pros and cons from various perspectives.  Another question is what determines compliance or lack thereof?  As an example, there are a wide range of views around the world on the degree to which, if at all, Iran is not in compliance with IAEA obligations. The ICNND argued that the Security Council should be the one to determine a country “to be in non-compliance with the NPT to so material an extent as to justify the non-application of any NSA” but it would not be tough to line up people opposed to using the Security Council to make such a judgment or using the stated language of non-compliance. 

These are the type of issues that deserve serious work as the U.S. begins to more seriously consider moving away from calculate ambiguity. As now DASD Brad Roberts noted, “our declaratory policy reaches a lot of different audiences” which is something we need to thoroughly think through.