INTERNATIONAL SECURITY ON THE ROAD TO NUCLEAR ZERO

Abstract

The disappointingly slow pace of progress on efforts to prevent proliferation, reduce nuclear weapons, and eliminate nuclear risks has many causes. The factor that might be easiest for individuals in the arms control and nonproliferation community to change stems from their own ambivalence about major questions that must be addressed on the road to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world to zero. This essay explores how ambivalence about four key issues—strategic stability, alliance relations, institution-building, and nuclear energy—often leads community members to take positions that play well at home and within their like-minded group but raise unintended impediments to achieving their own long-term goals. The author suggests alternative ways to handle these questions to improve the prospects for domestic and international agreement on practical measures that would eliminate, not perpetuate, nuclear risks.

Keywords:

• Disarmament
• nuclear weapons
• global zero
• cooperative threat reduction
• nonproliferation policy
• nuclear energy

Notes

1. This essay is based on an address delivered at the Middle Powers Initiative's conference, “Atlanta Consultation III: Fulfilling the Promise of the NPT,” Atlanta, GA, January 20–22, 2010. It reflects themes from the Advanced Methods of Cooperative Security Program, a research, education, and outreach initiative originated by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. For more on this program, see <www.cissm.umd.edu>.

2. The notion of arms control as a two-level game requiring both domestic and international agreement comes from Peter B. Evans et al., Double-Edged Diplomacy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).

3. “Joint Understanding by Obama, Medvedev on Weapon Negotiations,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, July 8, 2009, <www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/July/20090708154724xjsnommis0.7355005.html#ixzz1HR1GUxz1>.

4. For recent examples, see “Transcript of Remarks by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov at the Myrdal Lecture,” Geneva, February 12, 2008, <www.un.int/russia/new/MainRoot/docs/off_news/120208/newen1.htm>; and “Statement by H.E. Mr. Cheng Jingye, Head of the Chinese Delegation at the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” New York, May 4, 2009, <www.china-un.org/eng/hyyfy/t560530.htm>.

5. When the Obama administration announced in September 2009 that it would pursue the “phased adaptive approach” to missile defense rather than the Bush administration's plan to build a missile interceptor field in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic, it insisted that the change reflected intelligence assessments and enhanced technology, not an effort to allay Russian concerns. The initial phases of the Obama administration plan are focused on defense against short- and medium-range Iranian missiles, but if subsequent phases are pursued as scheduled, both the technical capabilities and the political ramifications will again pose problems for Russia unless it is participating in substantial joint missile defense activities by then.

6. Shortly before the Obama administration completed its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Japanese foreign minister sent his US counterpart a letter repudiating claims made by members of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States that the Japanese government had told them that for the sake of extended deterrence, Japan opposed retirement of the nuclear-capable Tomahawk land-attack missile (TLAM/N) and favored development of a robust nuclear earth penetrator. See Hans Kristensen, “Japanese Government Rejects TLAM/N Claim,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, January 24, 2010, <www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2010/01/japanrejects.php>.

7. Rebecca Johnson, “Unfinished Business: Lessons from the CTBT Negotiations,” Disarmament Diplomacy 91 (Summer 2009), <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd91/91ctbt.htm>.

8. On the need to think in terms of “compliance management” rather than “enforcement,” see Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes, The New Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

9. Most thinking about managing the proliferation implications of increased nuclear energy use has assumed an incremental increase that could be addressed through incremental changes to existing safeguards arrangements. If concerns about energy independence remain the major motivation, the IAEA projects that global nuclear power use will increase 70 percent by 2050. If governments make a more concerted effort to build up nuclear capacity in order to develop enough carbon-free energy sources to mitigate climate change, the IAEA projects a 400 percent increase by 2050. Undertaking a global nuclear expansion of this magnitude without increasing proliferation or terrorist access to nuclear materials would require much more significant changes to the technologies used for generating nuclear power, the international control arrangements, and the role of nuclear weapons in security policy. See “Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050,” IAEA, Reference Data Series No. 1, 2010 edition, <www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/IAEA-RDS-1-30_web.pdf>; and Harold Feiveson et al., “Can Future Nuclear Power Be Made Proliferation Resistant?” Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, July 2008, <www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/future_nuclear_power.pdf>.

10. “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” prepared for the secretary of state's Committee on Atomic Energy, March 16, 1946, <www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/ach46.pdf>.