President Obama in Berlin: "So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”

President Barack Obama at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate

Today, in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate, US President Barack Obama stood where Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy before him also stood.  He uttered the words now made famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” to a cheering crowd waving German and American flags together.  President Obama addressed the issue of nuclear weapons and proliferation in his speech.  Perhaps more importantly, Obama said, “We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”  While most likely rhetoric, Mr. Obama was correct when he said this; for as long as weapons exist that can take out entire cities and regions, no country or people are safe if war breaks out. 

President Obama championed the New START Treaty in his speech saying, “I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”  However, unless Mr. Obama has had some great change of heart, his actions during his Presidency regarding nuclear weapons have yet to meet the expectations laid out in his grandiose speeches.  The New START Treaty is made to sound ambitious and groundbreaking, it is however very conservative in its changes and unimaginative.  The new treaty sets the deployed weapon limit at 1550 warheads for each country.  The estimate of the US stockpile is estimated at 4,650 warheads, of which around 2,150 are deployed.  Russian nuclear stockpile is estimated at 4,500 weapons.  Only 1,800 of those warheads are deployed.  So the limit of 1550 really isn’t that drastic of a change.

Fewer Nuclear Weapons, but Closer to Abolition?: SIPRI Yearbook 2012

The SIPRI Yearbook 2012, released on June 4, shows that at the beginning of 2012, the total number of deployed nuclear weapons possessed by eight states (US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel) is nearly 4,400. If all nuclear warheads are included, these states together possess a total of nearly 19,000 nuclear weapons, as compared with 20,530 at the start of 2011 (see table).¹

The decrease, according to SIPRI, mainly results from the US and Russia reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) as well as retiring ageing and obsolescent weapons.¹

Can We Still Blow Up the World?

I was recently asked the following questions: How many times could we blow up the world with the number of nuclear missiles New START will take off the table? And with the number still on the table afterwards, how many times can we blow up the planet?  Here is my response:

I’ve actually never thought there was a good answer to the questions you pose.  First of all, you can’t really “blow up the world.”  What you can do, though, is destroy civilization and potentially annihilate the human species and most complex life.  We could do the worst we can to the planet and it will survive us, although not in a way we would necessarily recognize over the next few hundred thousand years.  And it is unlikely that members of our species would be here to observe the planet at all after an all-out nuclear war.

Re-thinking strategy

Choose domestic legislation over international treaties in nuclear disarmament efforts?

For anyone working on freeing the world of nuclear weapons, the standoff between the Obama Administration and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona on the required Senate approval of New START has been an infuriating chapter in 2010’s already rich collection of thrilling nuclear arms control tales.

Speaking for myself, it is sometimes difficult to see any positive side to the ‘what if-scenario’. Put plainly, if Senator Jon Kyl and his loyal group of Senators keen on obstructing the White House any way they can, manage to thwart ratification of New START, then surely all headway made by President Obama with regard to nuclear disarmament will have evaporated.

It seems that for every step that is taken in the right direction, two are taken in the opposite direction, effectively getting us further and further away from the end goal of a nuclear weapon-free world. As a result, the cynics are rewarded while the idealists have to be resilient and “get back on the horse.”

Answering Bolton and Yoo: New START Will Strengthen U.S. National Security

Two staunch ideologues who served in the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton and John Yoo, ask rhetorically in a New York Times opinion piece, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”  Bolton, a recess appointment as United Nations Ambassador under Bush II, never met an arms limitation agreement that he supported.  Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos supporting the legality of water boarding under international law (not a very favorable prospect for captured U.S. soldiers), worked in Bush II’s Justice Department.  Bolton and Yoo can find no good reason to support the New START agreement with the Russians, arguing that without amendments it will weaken “our national defense.”

Let me answer the question posed in the title of their article.

New START is a Needed Re-Start

The New START agreement, signed by US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev, is not a major leap forward toward nuclear disarmament.  Its goals are far more modest than needed, but they are still crucial.  For the Senate to turn down ratification of the treaty would be a disaster for the country and the world, opening the door to new arms races and to new justifications for nuclear proliferation.

The treaty will reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads on each side to 1,550 and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700 for each country.  The treaty will also provide for verification procedures to assure compliance.  Since the expiration of the START I agreement in December 2009, there has been no agreement on verification procedures between the two countries.

Testing a Fragile Relationship

This is a big week for nuclear weapon issues in the United States. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to give its take on the New START agreement with Russia a mere five months after the agreement was signed. Also, the US military has scheduled a test launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands for Wednesday morning.

For months now Republican senators and pundits have flooded the op-ed pages with warnings of the "bad deal" that is the New START agreement. "We're giving up everything while Russia gives up nothing," they say.

Now let's imagine that on Wednesday morning, instead of the US shooting off one of its ICBMs, it's the Russians doing it.

Dear Mitt Romney, Please Learn How to Properly Structure an Argument

Three weeks ago, Mitt Romney penned a Washington Post op-ed entitled "Obama's Worst Foreign-Policy Mistake," chock full of misleading information and outright lies about New START.  His op-ed prompted a flurry of repudiation from across both aisles (Sen. Lugar, Sen. Kerry, Steven Pifer); even staunch anti-STARTer Senator Jon Kyl's (R-AZ) letter of response wasn't that supportive.  Kyl's article was more of an angry rant against Obama than a well-articulated claim that Romney's assertions were correct.

Scores of experts were called before various Congressional committees, and they all refuted every one of Romney's arguments: missile defense, rail-mobile missiles, ICBM-silo conversion, data sharing, and verification.

Anyway, that brings us to today.  Romney has responded to Senators, officials, and experts with a brand new op-ed in the National Review, in which he attempts to save face by re-iterating "Eight Problems with New START."  I say that Romney attempted to save face, because, well...when it comes down to it, he pretty much fails at any real argumentation skills.  Let me lay it out for you, Mitty.

Most academics go by Toumlin's Model of Argumentation, which stipulates that there are six--count 'em six--components of an argument: Claim, Qualifier, Grounds, Warrant, Backing, Rebuttal.

New START Op-Ed Roundup!

This week saw a slew of op-eds about New START. It began when The Washington Post published former MA governor Mitt Romney’s op-ed on Tuesday, June 6th. Not only did Romney toe the conservative line regarding the ratification of New START, but he also concocted some new gems most Republicans don’t even use, such as the issue of placing ICBMs on bombers. On Wednesday, John Kerry wrote his own op-ed slamming Romney; Kerry even got in a personal dig, claiming Romney blatantly ignored the facts because he was in a “footrace to the right against Sarah Palin.” The same day, Steven Pifer and Strobe Talbott, analysts from the Brookings Institution, also wrote op-eds for The Washington Post debunking Romney’s claims. Yesterday, Jon Kyl’s piece appeared in The Wall Street Journal. To nobody’s surprise, Kyl did not support New START, but his piece was considerably tamer than Romney’s.

Many bloggers have already written extensively about these op-eds, but here's a conciser version of what you need to know...links and highlights after the jump:

The New START Debate: Fact vs. Fiction

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held another hearing on the New START Treaty Thursday afternoon; it focused on the risks and benefits of the bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Russia. Presenting witnesses included former U.S. Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation Ambassador Robert G. Joseph, former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Eric S. Edelman, and Director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Society Institute, Dr. Morton H. Halperin.

There were no real surprises at the hearing; Joseph and Edelman reiterated the same anti-START talking points, namely verification, missile defense, and counting measures. Halperin provided the only pro-START testimony during this particular hearing. Here’s what you need to know about the arguments surrounding ratification:

Partnership for a Secure America Publishes Statement on New START

The Partnership for a Secure America, an organization committed to restoring bipartisan dialogue and action on American national security and foreign policy, published a new statement on the ratification of the New START Treaty.  Thirty political figures from across the ideological spectrum, such as William Perry, George Shultz, and Madeline Albright, signed the statement, which urges the Senate to quickly ratify the new arms control agreement signed in April.  They acknowledge that the transparency measures provided by the treaty are key to national security, and that it:

• Enhances stability, transparency and predictability between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, which together possess about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons
• Contains verification and inspection measures essential to U.S. national security and nuclear threat reduction as it relates to Russia's strategic nuclear weapons
• Addresses our Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and therefore assists in gaining cooperation from other countries on key nonproliferation priorities
• Helps strengthen broader U.S.–Russia cooperation, which is important in responding to proliferation challenges from Iran and North Korea
• Does not inhibit our ability to maintain an effective and reliable nuclear arsenal
• Does not constrain our ability to develop and deploy missile defense systems.

New START vs. FY2011 Budget

In his Prague speech, President Obama proclaimed in order for the world to be free of nuclear weapons, the U.S. must spearhead a reduction of its nuclear arsenal. He won the hearts of many in the non-proliferation field when he stated that the U.S. would begin reducing its stockpile under his administration. How disheartening to us all, then, when we learned that his FY2011 budget reflected exactly the opposite. Far from committing funds for disarmament, he actually slashed the dismantlement program by 40%. By caving to conservative demands of modernization, Obama not only breaks his Prague promise, but acts against the spirit of New START.

New START is a follow-on to an agreement originally made between the U.S. and USSR to dismantle the relics of the Cold War, in order to build relations between the two adversaries, as well as reduce the risk of a nuclear accident. How strange then, that as the U.S. agrees to dismantle several hundred weapons with one hand, it funds the construction of weapons fuel facilities and Life Extension Programs (LEP) for aging arsenals with the other.