What’s Holding-Up the NPR?

By John K. Warden

In the last couple of weeks, there has been a flurry of news about the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).  The NPR was scheduled to be released in February, at the same time as the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), but will now be pushed back to March.  For months, there has been speculation about the contents of the NPR and that has intensified since the delay was announced.

There have been a number of explanations for the delay.  Michael Anton at the Weekly Standard thinks the delay was caused by START:

The last time the U.S. went though this exercise (in 2001), we at least put the horse before the cart.  We calculated our force requirements then used that as the basis for a new treaty (the so-called “Moscow Treaty”).  This time, the delay in finishing the NPR may well be in order to allow the new treaty to be finished first, to that the NPR can be backfilled with rationalizations for all the concessions Obama administration officials are busy making to the Russians.

The explanation is questionable.  The basic parameters of the new START have been set for some time, certainly long enough for the NPR drafter to take them into account without delay, and the cuts in START are likely to be modest, still allowing around 1500 deployed warheads.  It’s also been reported for a while that the main thing holding-up START is verification details, which are unlikely to have much of an impact on the content of the NPR.

Another explanation is that the delay was caused by bureaucrats being behind on their work.  Poking fun at the bloggers and columnists who are reading too much into the delay, John Isaacs at Nukes of Hazard writes:

Dear readers, it might just be possible that a delay is simply that, a delay. A failure to meet a deadline.  A bureaucracy that could not get its act together. An unprecedented act in Washington, DC.

There  have been whispers for some time that the NPR is behind schedule.  A couple months ago I heard that the NPR staff was so far behind that people from the QDR staff were shifting over to help them finish.  And now, the NPR is still way behind the QDR.  A complete draft of the QDR is being circulated for comments; it’s set to be published next week.  In fact, the Defense Department might beat the February 1st deadline and release the QDR early (they don't want to release the QDR at the same time that Obama's budget comes out).

The NPR, on the other hand, is nowhere near complete.  Bill Gertz at the Washington Times reports that there isn’t even a draft of  NPR yet:

The strategic review is being held up amid differences among President Obama's key White House advisers and national security officials at the Pentagon, and the state and energy departments, according to U.S. officials familiar with the process.
"There isn't even a draft of the NPR, that's really the problem," said one of the officials. "We're in the first week of January and we don't have a draft."

However, it’s difficult to pin the delay exclusively on the bureaucratic process.  The QDR, also a large undertaking, will be done on-time, and there’s no reason to think the NPR staff isn’t just as good as the QDR’s.  The NPR delay was more likely caused by the complexity of the issues and the lack of consensus among relevant parties.

There are a number of areas of contention.  For example, what should U.S. declaratory policy be?  Some liberals, and maybe even some in the administration, argue that the United States should adopt a no-first-use policy (pledging to use nuclear weapons only after another state uses nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies)?  However, Paul Richter at the Los Angeles Times says that’s not going to happen:

A "no-first-use" policy may represent a bigger step than the Obama administration would be willing to take, private analysts said.
Instead, they think the administration might hedge its policy by saying, for instance, that the United States would use nuclear weapons only in situations that threatened its existence.

Another area of contention is the composition of the U.S. nuclear force.  Some, including many in the Air Force, argue that the United States should eliminate nuclear bombers from the triad and rely exclusively on ICBMs and SLBMs.  While this idea seems to have some support, Bryan Bender at the Boston Globe reports that cuts in bombers are facing resistance:

Nonetheless, there remains fierce resistance to scrapping the nuclear bombers both inside and outside the Air Force. Supporters assert that…by being sent aloft, can signal US intent to use nuclear weapons to help defuse a possible crisis…There is also likely to be significant political opposition… bombers have strong political backers in…Louisiana, Missouri, and North Dakota.

There are two possible explanations for why these (and other) policy differences caused delays.  Some think that the direction of the NPR, led exclusively by the Pentagon in its early stages, was too conservative causing the Obama administration to intervene and push for more ambitious recommendations.  Joe Cirincione, in an interview with Plutonium Page of the Daily Kos, said that the internal debate has shifted from nuclear weapons infrastructure to policy, which is more contentious:

The Department of Defense has been involved in the Nuclear Posture Review for months, but up until October, almost all that discussion was about the nuclear weapons infrastructure: the jobs, the contracts, preservation of the base. Very little of it was on policy. The focus has shifted in the last few months to policy.

Another explanation is that the NPR staff is working to find an acceptable compromise, a middle-ground document that is true to Obama's vision for a world without nuclear weapons, while still outlining a strategy to maintain an effective deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist.  According to this explanation, the NPR was delayed because reaching a working compromise has proved elusive.  Ivan Oelrich of the FAS Strategic Security Blog explains that the people writing are incrementalists, who don’t share Obama’s vision:

Reading the news, going to meetings where government officials involved in the process give periodic updates, and knowing something of the main players who are actually writing the review, what jumps out most vividly to me is that no one seems to share President Obama’s vision…His appointees who are developing the Nuclear Posture Review, at least the ones I know anything about, are incredibly smart and knowledgeable, but they are also careful, cautious, and, I suspect, incrementalists who might understand intellectually what the president is saying but don’t feel it (and, in many cases, fundamentally don’t really agree with it). 

Of the many explanations for the delay in the NPR, the one that makes the most sense is that there are difficult political compromises that have to be made to satisfy all the people involved.  The final document will likely include some ambitious language.  While no-first-use seems like a non-starter, there could be a declaration that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear use.  The document could also call for additional cuts in strategic warheads beyond the new START range.  At the same time, the NPR will reiterate the importance of nuclear weapons in assuring allies and commit to investments to maintain a safe, secure, and effective deterrent.

Without a clear consensus among the parties involved, finding an acceptable compromise is taking longer than expected.  Like the final health care bill, the final version of the NPR will contain language that no one is happy with, but everyone can live with.