A Nuclear Policy Debate

A year ago in Prague President Obama confirmed an American "commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." This statement was applauded by many in the U.S. and around the world. Since that time the administration has been working on a Nuclear Posture Review (now overdue and expected within weeks) which many hope will provide insight into the Obama plans for a pathway from the current nuclear posture, to deep reductions in nuclear armaments (through treaties and other means) and to the eventual elimination of this class of weapons.

Paul Ingram on February 15th said, "...when a President gets up and makes a speech that contains within it commitments to a world free of nuclear weapons, proposing a number of initiatives, and looking forward to concrete commitments in the near term, it pays to be hopeful, but not gullible. And we have the first test of this hope in the very near future when the President comes to publish a version of his long awaited Nuclear Posture Review."

Some evidence regarding nuclear posture planning appeared with the budget on February 1st. On February 10th Greg Mello pointed out in a commentary in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that the budget request includes some of the largest increases in the history of warhead spending and will create new capacities that will allow production of new weapons in some years from now.

Martin Senn immediately added the concern that moves by the U.S. to connect theater missile defense systems (TMD) to advanced remote sensor capabilities will create serious strategic vulnerabilities for Russia and China when considering future reductions in numbers of strategic delivery systems.

On February 18th Todd Fine wrote, "...if the President fails to inspire others to adopt his 'vision' and work toward elimination concretely, he may miss a singular opportunity. If CTBT... is not ratified by the [NPT] conference in May, these [weapons complex] budget requests alone may devastate U.S. credibility."

The above are from just four of the ten voices (to date) in an important new debate among disarmament advocates and nuclear policy experts collected on the Defense Strategy Review web page. You can find them all at:

http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/obama-nuclear-policy-a-debate

If you think this exchange is a useful contribution to making progress toward the elimination of nuclear weapons (or more simply, better national policy) please pass the link along to others who may be interested.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Knight
co-director
Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA)
Commonwealth Institute
Cambridge, MA USA
617-547-4474
www.comw.org/pda/
follow PDA on Twitter: www.twitter.com/defensealt/
C'est mon Devoir - please do something for Haiti today... and next month, as well.
PDA in the news: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4508379 and http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1967353,00.html