Philip Taubman had an op-ed today in the NYT that reminded people of an important point about the modest START agreement:
Few presidential moments are more glittering than the announcement of arms reduction accords in the Kremlin’s gilded halls. For Mr. Obama, that was the easy part.
He does a good job outlining some of the difficulties the Obama administration will face, both on the Hill and from the “nuclear priesthood,” about trying to achieve more drastic cuts or sign the CTBT. While he cites the NPR as a “moment of truth” for U.S. nuclear policy moving forward, there is a somewhat troubling extrapolation that the White House should take the reigns of the NPR to help ensure the nuclear “bible” is written as they want it to be. He argues
President Obama must make sure it reflects his thinking . . . If the White House does not assert itself, the Nuclear Posture Review could easily spin off in unhelpful directions . . . To serve Mr. Obama’s interests, the new review should lay the groundwork for pronounced cuts in weapons and shape America’s nuclear stockpile to fit a world in which threats are more likely to come from states like North Korea and Iran than from a heavily armed power like Russia.
That seems a bit different from what the 2008 Defense Authorization Act explains as the job of the NPR:
Requirement for Comprehensive Review- In order to clarify United States nuclear deterrence policy and strategy for the near term, the Secretary of Defense shall conduct a comprehensive review of the nuclear posture of the United States for the next 5 to 10 years. The Secretary shall conduct the review in consultation with the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of State.
In the same way the Strategic Posture Commission was criticized for not advancing the Prague agenda enough, there is a good chance the NPR (being headed up by the principal drafter of the SPC) will produce a different answer than some want on the question of how do you “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” and “maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal.” That does not make the NPR “unhelpful.” If their assessments are accurate, it makes the NPR very helpful. When Reagan’s generals told him
politely but firmly told their commander in chief it was a terrible idea
they were providing their President with their best advice possible, even if it may not have been what he wanted to hear.
I fail to see see why the
I fail to see see why the elected head of state should be exempt from providing input to and indeed steering the crafting of the NPR. That is something quite different from it being written line by line in the Oval Office, but to think that it should be devoid of his influence is both fallacious and dangerous. DOD and the military’s role is to provide advice, but at the end of the day their words are no more sacrosanct and infallible than that coming out of the NSC, DOE, or State. (Imagine, if you will, what would have become of Iraq had the General Casey’s of the world had never been overruled.) The danger to not having the president’s views guide the NPR’s contents and overall direction is that it not only would it end up only reflecting the views of its DOD authors, but that it would result in a situation where the president is articulating a more progressive view of nuclear strategy and an influential but rigid bureaucracy is offering another. Having the USG speak with one voice is critical - especially if the NPR is, as you cite, intended to reflect the nuclear strategy and posture of “the United States.”
I think Taubman got this
I think Taubman got this rather backwards. He appears to insinuate that the purpose of the NPR is to play a support role to Obama’s goals, or, as the author puts it, “serve Mr. Obama’s interest” rather than the other way around. The role of the NPR is to objectively state, as quoted in the blog post, “United States deterrence policy and strategy for the near term.” And, as Keith Payne wrote in yesterday’s WSJ, “Strategic requirements should drive force numbers; arms-control numbers should not dictate strategy.”