ABSTRACT
Jon Wolfsthal is renowned for his policy achievements and his well-informed articles on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation issues. He served as special assistant to former US President Barack Obama and as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2017. He was special adviser to Vice President Joe Biden for nuclear security and nonproliferation and a director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council from 2009 to 2012. During his time in the Obama White House, Wolfsthal was a key figure in formulating and implementing Obama administration nuclear policies. This interview enables both experts and the general public to become more acquainted with major determinants of the policy options that the Obama administration pursued as it sought to advance the President’s “Prague agenda”. The following text actually combines two interviews, conducted on 30 July 2017 and 1 March 2018 and edited for this journal.
Hiroshima Visit
You have been a distinguished expert on nuclear weapons policy for a long time, but finally, in summer 2017, you visited Hiroshima to attend a symposium held in this city.
It was my first visit to Hiroshima. It was challenging to be there. I’ve spent my whole life working on nuclear issues. Before coming to Hiroshima, I had visited many locations associated with nuclear weapons development and use. I have been to U.S. Strategic Command and Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories. Then, I had been through 35 years of working on nuclear issues, but had never been to Hiroshima. To finally come to Hiroshima is – it makes you, it forces you to think. It forces you to be aware of what you’re working on. So, it’s challenging. I woke up early on the morning after arrival at Hiroshima and walked over to the Peace Park. On that day, some ceremony was scheduled in the Peace Park. I didn’t want to attend this ceremony as my first time visit to the Peace Park – so I could get my crying done beforehand. Then I can be a little bit more composed at the ceremony.
What was your impression of the Peace Park?
It’s beautiful. In the United States, people are still very sensitive in discussing the bombing of Hiroshima. And every time there is a museum exhibit or an event on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a big controversy. So, in reading all of the language and transcription it’s clear that there is also a great sensitivity here in the way that things are talked about.
American people are still very sensitive?
Just the language. It’s clear that it’s very delicate. And so, I find it interesting that we have the same concern, both in the United States and in Japan, it’s reflected in all of our language. But it’s emotional. And it’s hard to know really how to feel as an American, as a friend of Japan, as someone who wants to eliminate nuclear weapons but who also understands history. It’s – the word I keep coming back to is it really is challenging; it’s forcing me to rethink all of the assumptions, all of the conclusions, which is why we come here. Right? It’s easy to think about these issues in Harvard University or at Stanford; it’s another thing to come to where a nuclear weapon has been used and to think about it.
In the Peace Park, did you think about President Obama who visited there in May of 2016?
Yes. Before coming to Hiroshima, I had gone back and watched the video of President Obama’s speech. When I walked over to the Peace Park, I saw the cenotaph. My image now is very recent of President Obama standing before it. But I’ve watched annual ceremonies at the Peace Park on TV for years. At least in my lifetime, his visit was the major milestone.
I know now President Obama has a very strong connection with the town, but for me it’s much deeper than that. And the most striking thing is the Children’s Memorial, all of the paper cranes in the display case, the memorial to the poet and the focus on children. Obviously, people in Hiroshima spent a lot of time on education about nuclear issues. The people that I’ve worked with have really focused on keeping this knowledge alive. And so, for me, that’s a really powerful connection for the park.
President Obama’s visit was very impressive for Japanese people. Was the American public nervous or cautious about President’s visit to Hiroshima?
I think there were some people in the government who were nervous. Most people in America still don’t know that it happened. It was not as major a story in America as it was in Japan. And because of how difficult our politics is, President Obama was criticized for everything. You know this: He wore a light-coloured suit and people said, “Why is he wearing a light-coloured suit?” He went to the Boy Scouts and said, “You should work hard and focus on school”. They said, “Well, why are you saying that they don’t work hard?” So, that was just because of how difficult it was for people to accept President Obama.
I would say for the very informed audience there was nervousness and some caution. But the way that the speech developed and the fact that the President did not apologize for what happened here but talked about what Hiroshima means, both for him but also for the United States and Japan, and then of course for Japan and South Korea, and Japan and China, I think made it much easier to be navigate. And quite frankly, I think the reaction now is “Gee, why were we worried?” because the visit was so well-received. But it wasn’t a very popularly discussed issue, not the way it was here in Japan.
And I think this is true also for when Prime Minister Abe came to Pearl Harbor. It was half a day. Maybe it made – I’m sure in Hawaii and California it made front pages, but even in New York it was probably not a big issue. And that’s also because Americans don’t pay enough attention to what is going on in the world. They are very narrowly focused. And so, major events like that in our history don’t appeal to the broader public.
Was there any debate about whether President Obama should make a trip to Hiroshima and what kind of speech should be delivered?
So, that gets into sort of the internal discussion. And I was – as a bureaucrat – very eager for President Obama to come to Hiroshima. My mission was for the President to make deeper cuts in nuclear weapons, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, really to move forward based on the Prague speech. And so, that’s why I was hired into the administration, to pursue this policy. And bureaucratically, if you want to get something done it helps to have a deadline: a summit meeting with a head of state or a major speech. And so, when I was hired in December of 2014, as special assistant to President Obama as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, my first thought was “Okay, how do I get the Defense Department, the State Department, the Energy Department to deliver some ideas for the President?” And the idea of Hiroshima was a big part of that. So, when I wrote my first memo for the President, probably in February or March of 2015, and at that point I suggested that Obama should visit Hiroshima, and argued that we needed a major event and that candidates included visiting Hiroshima, visiting Nagasaki. I did not suggest the President come in August, but anniversaries also being major speeches.
And so, there was a big debate and discussion in the administration, and we agreed pretty quickly that it’s very hard for the President to come to Hiroshima and give a speech about managing nuclear weapons, about being a responsible owner of nuclear weapons, because of the delicacy of the issue. It almost is beneath the importance of Hiroshima to talk about the details of nuclear strategy, and it’s much better for him to talk about the trajectory, the goals we have for elimination. And at the same time – and this is true, I think, in your government as well as ours – people in government who work on specific issues – non-proliferation, human rights, the environment – are important, but they’re not as important as people who manage regional security: Asia, Western hemisphere.
So, I wanted the President to come to Hiroshima, and my colleagues who worked on East Asia, like Dan KritenbrinkFootnote1 and others – Chris JohnsonFootnote2 – thought it was a good idea, but they said it’s much more powerful for us to use the visit as a message of reconciliation. Because what we were working on at the time was really focused on the comfort women issue and convincing China to turn down the temperature and to engage more constructively with Japan, with South Korea, that this should not – and the South China Sea as well. And that is really what convinced the President to come to Hiroshima, that it was the symbol, but the message was one of not looking back or doing things on nuclear weapons, but actually focusing more on the regional security.
Now, at the same time we agreed the President can do nuclear things through other ways, and we agreed that he wouldn’t need the speech of nuclear disarmament; he would make some other decisions. And so, we just ended up splitting the two things.
So, compared to the Prague speech, the Hiroshima speech was very – I got very moved by the speech. It was a very good speech, I think. But compared to the Prague, I think it is very idealistic – it’s more like ideas, not the actual policy matters.
No details. No actions.
I think that’s true for two reasons – well, lots of reasons. One is in 2009, when the Prague speech was made, the president had only been president 3 months. He was very ambitious: “We’re going to do this”. “We had to lay out a policy”: “These were the specific things we wanted to do”. And at the beginning of an administration, people need a blueprint. What are we working on? How are we going to achieve these issues? And I was involved in writing Prague as well. And so, we had from the campaign the president’s agenda, and we were able to pull that together in the speech. And it was very helpful in getting people, because you no longer had an argument – Secretary Gates couldn’t say, “Well, I’m not sure the president believes that”. We were like, “No, he wrote it here in the speech. This is – he said it”.
In 2016, there is very little time to do new things by the end of President Obama’s term, and so you’re either going to talk about what you have done or you’re going to think more thematically, you’re going to think more strategically about how we need to approach these issues. It has less of an impact but it may have more inspiration. And I think that was the main focus. And also, I think because there was this nervousness, there was also this – if the president had gone to Hiroshima and said, “We are going to eliminate 500 nuclear weapons”, in America they would say, “See, he feels guilty. This really was an apology. He’s giving – he’s doing penance”. And so, that didn’t work for our political system. It would have been very challenging for us.
At the end of the administration, 11 January 2017, Vice President Biden gave a speech where he said, “Given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats, it’s
hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary. Or make sense. President Obama and I are confident we can deter and defend ourselves and our Allies against non-nuclear threats through other means”.Footnote3 Vice President Biden and the President believed that the US could safely adopt a no-first-use. In their 8 years, there was no situation where they even considered the use of nuclear weapons. It wasn’t necessary.
So, we pushed to see whether that type of announcement could be in the Hiroshima speech, but it wasn’t fully developed then. There wasn’t that sort of support. And quite frankly, we still had a lot of opposition from the Defense Department because of how it would affect the bilateral relationship with Japan and with South Korea. So, it became very hard to do details. But it was a good speech.
During the period when you were planning the President’s visit to Hiroshima, was there already a plan for Japanese Prime Minister Abe to visit Pearl Harbor?
I know that they were discussing it, but I was not involved in the bilateral negotiations. Because it was about the time of the G20,Footnote4 it was very difficult to get anybody to talk about anything but the G20. What I was told is that the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was willing to talk about it (his possibility to visit Pearl Harbor), but that they couldn’t talk about timing because there was too much going on in Japan. They had no concern about what it would mean. But they were concerned that it not be seen as a quid pro quo, that it not be seen as a “I will go to Pearl Harbor if you go to Hiroshima”.
It should not be a political and diplomatic trade.
Right. No trade, no connection. It had to be seen as organic for each – right? So, the President had to decide “I want to go to Hiroshima”.
So, in spite of what happened in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, now we have a good alliance. That was another good opportunity for Mr. Abe to emphasize the strengths and power of this bilateral alliance.
That’s true. But it probably also helps him too, is just because we had a military past doesn’t mean that we can’t be good friends with each other.
No-First-Use
It was said in 2016 that President Obama wanted to adopt and declare a no-first-use policyFootnote5 of nuclear weapons.
I think that is maybe overstated. We presented the president with a number of options for ways that he could advance the Prague agenda and could further reduce the role of nuclear weapons. And without saying, “You should do this” or “You shouldn’t do this” we gave him a number of options and we said, “You can make changes in declaratory policy. You can make changes in force structure. You can make changes in operations. And you can make changes in modernization. You have many different ways”.
Was a de-alerting option included?
Yes. So, we basically talked about Prague. We said, “What can we do to reduce the role of nuclear weapons? What can we do to reduce the number of nuclear weapons?”
You needed a longer decision time.
Yes, Presidential decision time. Exactly right. And so, “Here are ways that you can achieve each of these”. And we got into all sorts of options. We looked at de-alerting. We looked at no-first-use. We looked at other changes to declaratory policy. So, not just no-first-use. In the Nuclear Posture Review, we talked about Sole PurposeFootnote6 – so, you could adopt sole purpose and be maybe more ambiguous. And we presented those up to the president, and he said, “Okay, I want to discuss this, this, and this. This I don’t think makes – ”.
When did that take place?
This was after I returned to government as special assistant to president Obama. Probably in 2015. After Prague speech, he had to deal with other important issues like health care. Then, he then returned to nuclear issues in 2012, and we had the Nuclear Employment Guidance Review. And so, the president spent a lot of time thinking about that. That’s when he announced in June of 2013 at Berlin, we could reduce nuclear weapons with Russia if we could agree.Footnote7 Then other things, such as Ukraine Crisis, happened. And back in 2015, we came back to nuclear issues again. So, we presented a range of options. He said, “Okay, let’s discuss this, this, this and this. This one, no. This one, no. This one, no”. And we – so, we presented discussion papers for the deputy secretaries to discuss, then the principals to discuss, and then eventually the president.
Can you describe a process before presenting papers to the President?
Sure. We always went by a standard process in the administration. Ideas could come from anywhere. I was specifically asked by Susan RiceFootnote8 and Avril Haines,Footnote9 the Deputy National Security Advisor, to develop a list of ideas that would help to fulfil the promise of the Prague Agenda.
And so, I then organized inter-agency meetings with my colleagues from State Department, Defense Department, Joint Chiefs, Department of Energy, the intelligence community to solicit their ideas. What are things we could do? And then we also developed some of our own ideas in consultation with other White House staff, and also by meeting with outside experts. So, we met with people like William PerryFootnote10 and Dick Garwin,Footnote11 other senior former officials and experts. We developed that into what in the National Security Council process is called an options paper where we laid out here are the – I forget the number. I think we had a dozen ideas. Some were very small. Some were very large. And then we didn’t just give that to the president. We actually ran that through a process where the deputy secretaries of the under-secretaries reviewed them. They were able to provide their comments like “We think this is a good idea”, “We think this is a bad idea” and so on.
And then eventually we held a principals meeting with cabinet secretaries and then a National Security Council meeting. So, this wasn’t just one individual. This was the entire government. Now, there were some ideas that nobody supported. There were some ideas that only the White House supported, but none of the cabinet agencies. There were some ideas that one cabinet agency supported but nobody else. This was designed to be a big tent. In some cases, if there’s no support for these ideas, you won’t bring them to the president. If everybody has rejected – or, if there is agreement at a low level, you might say, “Well, we don’t have to go to the president”. But because this was the president’s agenda for Prague, we decided this was going to be a very open process.
And in one of these options papers, nuclear no-first-use was included as an option.
Yes. When we, National Security Council, wrote the paper for no-first-use and other changes in declaratory policy and we circulated it for comment to the agency. It leaked. This was the article that came out in The Washington Post: “The president is considering adopting no-first-use”. And we got a call from Prime Minister Abe’s office objecting to no-first-use adoption. And we said, “We’re not adopting no-first-use. We’re looking at what our options are”. The people who leaked it did so, because they wanted to create opposition to it. So by that time, they were very successful.
But I don’t know that the president would have adopted a no-first-use. He at no point said to me, “I want to do this; show me how”. And at a certain point at the end of the administration I went to Susan Rice, my boss, and said, “Even if the president today said, ‘I want this (no-first-use),’ I don’t know how we would do it”. Because it would take a significant amount of effort working with Japan and South Korea and NATO to create the conditions where we could do it effectively, and at a certain point that just did not become possible. I mean, we would have to have prolonged conversations at very senior levels and make agreements and compensation for how we would actually maintain deterrence. And so, by the end of summer of 2016, it was clear that we weren’t going to adopt no-first-use policy.
Did Japanese government officials contact you?
We had visits from Japanese officials. And it had almost nothing to do with North Korea and it had almost everything to do with China, the idea that somehow if we were to adopt no-first-use, it would be seen by China as reducing our commitment to Japan, and therefore it would reduce Japanese security. And when we made the argument that it is not credible for the United States to threaten the use of nuclear weapons first against China and that eliminating that would make our retaliatory threat much more credible, that was not an argument that was convincing to the Japanese government.
Why did this idea come up at this timing? Was it brought by the president himself?
This was something from the president. As I said, I was hired into the government again in the end of 2014. I was brought in specifically because they wanted to have more attention paid to the Prague agenda, and wanted not an advocate but somebody who would be more proactive. So, over the course of 2015, we worked a number of ideas, we held some lower level meetings, we generated some content. So, this wasn’t the only time we worked these. But it wasn’t until early 2016 that we actually brought these issues to the president.
And had there been consensus or support early on, conceivably we could have gone earlier. But I think the first time we wrote – I want to say I wrote a memo for the president that he saw in maybe March or April of 2015 in which he said, “Okay, I want to pursue these ideas”. But, as I said earlier, the cabinet did not meet with the president until 2016.
Management of US–Japan Alliance
Let me ask you about the management of US–Japan alliance. What did you think of bilateral strategic dialogue between the US and Japan?
I think in the extended deterrence dialogue (EDDFootnote12 ), we talk about deterrence and credibility. But of course, the EDD is run by the Defense Department, who does not support no-first-use. So, they don’t come and say, “Gee, let’s talk about why we don’t need to make this strategy”. They just say, “We will use nuclear weapons first. Here are the weapons we would use. So, don’t worry. We’re fine”.
We don’t have general academic philosophical discussions about deterrence in the extended deterrence dialogues. We do table top exercises and explain which F-16s would fly with the B-21 bombers, the B-52 bombers escort to show our interoperability.
Very operational.
Right. I think people in the Japanese government understand deterrence very well, but they also have a national perspective, which is “We shouldn’t take any threats off the table, and it doesn’t matter to us if it’s credible or not, because it’s the United States that has to make the threat”.
So, how does table top work?
When we say table top, we don’t mean it like the movies where we have the little – I used to think that as well. It would be good if we had those. By table top, we simply mean people are around a table. There will be video displays. There will be briefing papers. But it will be to provide political leaders a chance to understand how the mechanics actually work. But many years ago, we would simply talk to the US–Japan treaty office and say, “We will issue a statement that our alliance is strong, that we have nuclear assets, we’ll exercise these things”. When we started to get into more details to reassure Japanese Self-Defense Forces but also politicians, we actually mean this. The head of Pacific command, the head of strategic command and the local commanders joined, and table top actually is something we think through in great detail. What are the availability rates of our aircraft? How long would it take them to fly? What would be the primary missions? How would we coordinate between Japanese forces to be able to show the level of detail, and do a much better job of making sure there’s coordination and integration of Japanese forces? So, a great example is that Japanese aircraft could fly defensive missions for some of these, and that would free up American assets to then carry out offensive. Obviously, that has to be done in conformity with Japanese law, but it’s that level of detail we could at through briefing slots.
Regarding nuclear weapons, do you talk about on what conditions and in which cases you’re going to be serious about using nuclear weapons?
Not to a great level of detail. It’s not as if we say, “All right, if China destroys these four ships with nuclear weapons, we would then respond against this specific target”. Generally, what will happen is as we do all of these activities. We will say, “If there is a need for a nuclear response, that would be a decision that would take place in the United States, the most likely communications would be our president to talk with the prime minister, our secretary of defense would talk” – you know.
We would then sort of – it would be the process of communication and consultation. At a certain point, once a decision is made, it is then a US decision. So, I would say that the consultation generally stops once a decision to employ nuclear weapons is made. And there is some discussion about what an appropriate target is, what the likely scenarios of use would be. But, without getting into the same level of detail as we do when it comes to actual battle operations.
Let me ask if the US and Japan talk about nuclear options in the prior consultation. Can the US use nuclear weapons without consulting Japan in the middle of a crisis?
We lease the bases. If we’re going to be moving in your air space, if we’re going to be moving – of course we have to consult with you. We’d have to talk about what are the air routes and what are the conditions. If we were to use a nuclear weapon, say, against China or North Korea, politically it would make sense for us to coordinate. But we don’t need Japanese permission, because we are using a US nuclear weapon from US territory from international waters targeting something that is not in Japan. But I think there’s also an element which is we discuss what is necessary to deter and to defeat an adversary conventionally. And if a decision is made that it has to then go to the nuclear level, that is a sovereign US decision. We would coordinate and talk to Japan in advance, but there’s no legal requirement for us to do so.
But the Japanese officials or experts have some concern that if the US decides to use nuclear weapons, then Japan may become a target for nuclear retaliation.
I think this is inherent in the discussions of – and this does take place in the extended deterrent dialogues and the strategic dialogues, and when our defense ministers meet. But I think everybody in Japan understands this, that as an ally, we may have a war localized to the Korean peninsula. We may only use conventional weapons, and North Korea may still use a nuclear weapon against Japan because you’re our ally. So, we do talk about that, and we talk about if Japan were the target of a nuclear weapon, how would the United States respond? We don’t say we would automatically use nuclear weapons, because we haven’t made that decision. We don’t – it may be that that’s appropriate; it may be that that’s not appropriate.
The Japanese prime minister may not demand a nuclear response. He may say, “We don’t want a nuclear response”. It depends on the circumstance. So, we do discuss those things, but not to the level of guarantees or of the detailed planning that would say if A, B and C happens – that is much more of a back and forth dialogue where if North Korea were to use one nuclear weapon, does Japan believe that the United States would have to respond with a nuclear weapon to restore deterrence? Or, if we could defeat North Korea without the use of nuclear weapons, is that a preferred scenario? I think we have those sort of conceptual discussions. But the EDD is really much more focused on the mechanics of how these things would work. Who makes the decision, what are the appropriate contact points in the communications, what’s the expectation of Japan?
Let us suppose that a first nuclear strike is aimed at Japanese territory. How would the US and Japan respond to it? The US has the capability to retaliate, and maybe the two countries would confer immediately on a response. We would rely on prior consultations based on our bilateral security treaty, but the actual response would depend highly on the specific circumstances.
I think if you were dealing with this scenario, unless there were some time-limited decisions, I believe that the president would want to know how the Japanese government wanted to respond. I think there’s probably been – I don’t know for sure. I think there has been some general discussion in the EDD about what Japan’s expectations would be, how this would affect our ability to generate military forces.
But I don’t believe we’ve gone and said to Japan, “If this happened, do you want us to respond to a nuclear weapon?” I think we would say in that scenario, there would be consultation. I think that’s probably as far as it goes, but I don’t know for sure.
I have one more related question. If a US military base is attacked by a first strike from North Korea with a nuclear weapon, will that be a US decision as to how to respond, or will the US respond in consultation with Japan?
I can’t imagine a decision – there’s no scenario where a nuclear weapon is used against a US base where there weren’t Japanese casualties, where there weren’t huge impacts on Japan’s society, economy. And so, again, I believe that there would be – it’s not a joint decision, but the Japanese view would be a major factor in how the president chose to respond. And this is – it would depend by president, of course.
Under President Obama, I’m sure that if Japan said, “Under no circumstances do we want a US nuclear weapon to be used”, I can’t say that that would be the ultimate deciding factor, but that would be a major factor. If Japan were to say, “We demand, you must in order, for the future of our alliance” – I’m sure that would be a major factor. I don’t think it would be the core thing, but it probably would be the largest single factor either way.
I think, hard – this is just a personal view – I think it’s hard for Japanese officials to come and tell the United States what you think the United States should do with its nuclear weapons. Because politically there’s a sense that “Well, we can’t be – ” Japanese officials cannot be openly coordinating nuclear policy because it’s controversial. And there’s still this – I don’t want to be unsensitive; I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s still almost like a big brother/little brother relationship. Which I think is outdated, but I think it’s still part of the psychology.
So, at no point did the president say, “I’m in favour of no-first-use”. And at no point did we have a plan for how we would pursue no-first-use. But if we had been asked, the first thing we would have done is say, “Okay, we need to go talk with Japan, South Korea and NATO to understand how this would change their perception”. And the challenge we ran is the chicken and the egg problem. So, if we haven’t decided that we want no-first-use and we just want to sort of see how you feel about it, it’s very hard to go to you and ask because then you’ll think we want to do it. But if we don’t decide that we want to do it, it’s not worth the pain of the conversation that we would have. And so, again, it became a question of: If the president wants it, we can do it, but if he’s not sure, it’s very controversial to go and start the conversation. And that’s when things leaked and it became very hard for that to happen.
This is a hypothetical question: If the Japanese government had said, “Okay, no-first-use is acceptable”, would there be a policy change?
I think it would have been a much more active discussion, because in addition to Japan raising the issue here, the Pentagon – both the military and the civilian – said, “But you can’t do this because our allies will be worried”. So, we even debated in – among the senior officials, among the Cabinet – not in front of the President but elsewhere – actually, at one point we did it in front of the President – Defense officials saying, “Our allies will object. They will view this as a weak…” and other people saying, “Well, no, I talk to our allies too”. The State Department and other said, “they want to support disarmament. They want to support the Non-Proliferation treaty. In fact, you’re just talking about the allies you work with in the Security Office. We work with our allies in the Disarmament Office”. And so, there is disconnect. I mean, the interesting hypothetical, if Kishida-san (Fumio Kishida, Japan’s former minister of foreign affairs) had been prime minister, how would he have acted? Right? What would have been the dynamic like?
And some of this is personal but some of it is just strategic – I would not recommend it for any other weapons system. I wouldn’t say we shouldn’t use conventional cruise missiles or submarines or airplanes or spy satellites or cyber or any of those issues. But nuclear weapons are different. And the idea that we would initiate a nuclear exchange, to me, is not a credible threat. And I don’t think the president viewed it as a credible threat. And that’s why you didn’t hear us make that threat.
I don’t think the president ever said, “I’m prepared to use nuclear weapons first if I have to”. Or anything along those lines. I think he said, “We’ll preserve our options”. In the Nuclear Posture Review he said, “Of course we would reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in specific narrow contingencies”. But we never bragged about it. It’s not like Donald Trump or the admirals. Yeah, right, it’s very different.
When the nuclear security experts talk about nuclear weapons they talk about the benefits – stability, deterrence, reassurance – and they never talk about the costs. I don’t mean financial costs but the risks. Because some of them don’t believe that there are risks, and some believe that they’re negligible… But there are risks to having nuclear weapons. Accidents. Miscalculation. Precedent that other countries can follow. And temptation. My favourite – one of my favourite articles is just the – just the title is Scott Sagan’s “The Problem of Redundancy Problem”. We engineer all of these systems and we think we’re so smart because we put layer after layer after layer of security. And in fact, every time you add a layer you’re making yourself more vulnerable because you can’t control or anticipate how these things all act with each other.
Trapped in a negative cycle of action-reaction process.
I think that’s right. There’s a wonderful book by Francis FitzGerald called Way Out There in the Blue (Fitzgerald Citation2001), and it’s all about America’s obsession with missile defense. And it – there’s an element of American society from the Industrial Revolution that technology will keep us safe. And I assume – I’m not an expert, but I assume that because of the tremendous growth in the Japanese economy in the 1950s and 1960s you have the same sense. Excellent engineering and mathematics and construction. So, you think, “Yes, this will protect us”.
A belief that we can have a technical fix?
Right. But some things don’t have a technical fix. And there’s always a risk. And so, President Obama said, “It is – people think that nuclear weapons are the answer to our security. They’re not. They are the source of our insecurity”. And we have to manage that risk in a way that keeps us safe until we can eliminate these things. But the only way we’re truly safe is if we can figure out a way to eliminate these weapons. And that’s not the way George W. Bush talked about these weapons, and it’s not the way Donald Trump talks about these weapons.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeated his assertion that he might support allowing Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons. What is your view on his comments?
I don’t think Donald Trump’s views represent American policy. And I don’t think Donald Trump’s views even represent Donald Trump’s policy, because I don’t think he knows what he said. I think the quote was a simplistic logic that Japan is a friend, and so it doesn’t hurt us if Japan has nuclear weapons. Which is true on one level, right? Japan is not going to target nuclear weapons on America, and therefore it doesn’t present a threat. But Japan having nuclear weapons does present a major risk to American objectives to managing security in the region and to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. If Japan, given its unique history, given its unparalleled security relationship with the United States, decides that it no longer trusts America’s commitment to its security to the point that it has to have its own nuclear weapons, then I think America is done as a global power and I think Japan has much bigger problems than nuclear weapons will ever solve for it. I just don’t – I think at that point disarmament and non-proliferation and regional security architectures are – have to be completely rethought.
And that’s not because of anything unique about Japan and what it would do with nuclear weapons, but it is a reflection of how America has built up the post-war order. Collective security has worked for us. It’s been a tremendous success. And it has allowed Japan and all of East Asia and all of Europe to prosper and to save money.
The canary in the coal mine – you know that expression?
Yes.
The symbol of Collective security is extended deterrence. So, if you feel comfortable and you’re the canary in this scenario – you’re the canary. Nobody likes to be the canary. But in this scenario, if you can survive without nuclear weapons, that shows that the system is healthy. And if you can’t, that means the whole system has to be redone. So, when my friends and I talk about the future of Japan, the future of South Korea, the future of Germany or other countries, it’s very hard for us to imagine a situation where those countries possess nuclear weapons and where the relationship with the United States remains the same, because the proliferation of weapons would show that the relationship has already changed. I think that is true almost everywhere with probably the exception of Turkey, because of all of the current security, political, diplomatic situation with Turkey. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways to adjust the relationship.
Nuclear signalling from Japan and South Korea, whenever there is insecurity about the relationship and the commitment of the United States, they – both some people in Seoul and Tokyo push the “nuclear weapons, we need more attention” button. And I think that’s true. I think it was true in the ’60s. I think it’s been true in the ’80s. I think it was true with South Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the early ’80s. And in the Japan debate about joining the NPT.
When those discussions happen we find ways to work more closely together, because it’s a signal that you are uncomfortable. Now, could that include redeploying nuclear weapons to South Korea? I don’t think it’s a great idea. I don’t think we have any military reason to do it. But if that’s what it took for South Korea to feel a commitment and that we were going to have more US troops there and – then that makes perfect sense. For Japan it may not be nuclear weapons. It may be redeployment of nuclear weapons aboard ships. It may be missile defense cooperation. Joint development of weapon systems. It may be changing the nature of deployment of forces in Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan. It might be extending the base at Yokosuka?
So, there are lots of ways that we can show the strength of the alliance. Now, in the end, if Japan were to change its constitution or the politics were to change so we could say the United States will deploy nuclear weapons in Japan, if you think Japan can do that, and if the United States felt that’s what was necessary to maintain the security, I think we could do that. But again, there’s so many steps before going to extreme options. I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal before we have to go in that – to go to that extreme.
This is a longwinded answer of saying I don’t worry about Japan becoming a nuclear power. And if I have to worry about Japan making a decision to build nuclear weapons, I have much bigger problems to worry about because that means America is fundamentally changed as a global power. At that point we’re all learning to speak Chinese or Russian. I just think that the world is really much, much different then, and the trade relationship is different, the economic relationship is different, the cultural relationship is different.
And that’s why – it’s an example of why Donald Trump in my view is so dangerous and damaging, because he’s not thoughtful, and people in the United States think he’s serious when he’s not a serious person. There must be some strategy. Right? I mean, President Xi of China is scratching his head like “What is Trump thinking? This must be some very calculated…” . Right? And I think Putin knows that Trump is not a smart guy. But all these other leaders all over the world are thinking, “The United States never does anything without thinking it through carefully and there must be a plan”. There’s no plan. Trump White House, his government is being run by people who don’t know what they’re doing right now.
Nuclear Modernization
Next, let me ask you about the US programs on nuclear weapon system modernization. I visited the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2015. At that time, I got the impression that the US was quite active in modernizing its nuclear arsenal. In his Prague speech, President Obama laid out his vision of nuclear disarmament, and yet he also made commitments to modernization programs. How did President Obama decide to pursue modernization of the US nuclear arsenal?
In the United States, when I talk to my friends who support disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons, they always talk about the Prague speech and how important it was in seeking the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. And when I talk to my friends in the deterrence community and the security community, they talk about the Prague speech and how important it was because President Obama said as long as we have nuclear weapons they would be safe, secure and effective, and we need to make sure that we’re investing.
So, the Prague speech is really like a piece of art – because everybody thinks it’s beautiful. They can find what they want in it. I always get asked: “How can the president support disarmament and invest in modernization?” And this is what the United States has been doing for 70 years. We have – since before the Non-Proliferation Treaty, since Truman was president and the Baruch plan,Footnote13 we have supported the elimination of nuclear weapons. But we have also said that because of our security, and then later because of the security of our allies, that we would maintain an effective nuclear deterrent.
So, very early on in the Obama administration, two things happened. The first is the president understood that in order to focus international attention on Iran and their nuclear program that the United States had to be seen as recommitting itself to nuclear elimination, to disarmament. This is part of the Four Horsemen, Shultz–Perry–Kissinger–Nunn (Shultz et al. Citation2007). It was that the United States was seen being a part of the non-proliferation problem instead of the champion of non-proliferation. So, the president gave the Prague speech not just to lay out for his staff but also to change the discussion about Iran, and it was very effective.
But another thing that became apparent is that when we came into office and began to work on the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)Footnote14 and began to work on nuclear policy issues, the Bush administration, in order to pay for the war in Iraq, in order to make the war seem less expensive, had been pulling money from all of the other defense programs to pay for the war, including from nuclear modernization, safety, stockpile stewardship, maintaining existing nuclear weapons. And when we began to meet with the military and we began to meet with the lab directors, they expressed a lot of concern about the low funding and the declining funding, and the president made the decision that we were going to commit to invest what we needed to invest in modernization.
And so, those two things became linked together, that we would pursue reductions, we would reduce the role of nuclear weapons, but that we would spend what we needed to spend to maintain the deterrent.
Did President Obama express his concerns about the big cost for modernization?
At a certain point I think that cost will become a big issue. The president was not involved regularly in looking at modernization and seeing how big it was becoming, how many weapons were going to be built. And towards the end of the Obama administration we began to really revisit and debate whether those were necessary – could the president make some decisions? But I think by the time we engaged in that discussion the sense was – there was no time for the president to make changes, and what he would do instead is to present options for the next president to look at. But the idea that the president could pursue disarmament but also maintain nuclear weapons, we did not see as being inconsistent.
Even if the US needs to maintain nuclear weapons, this question is inevitable – how much is enough?
At no point did the president say, “I’m worried we have too many nuclear weapons”. He has said, and I think he continues to believe, that the United States can be safe even if we have a smaller number of nuclear weapons. So, in negotiating the new START treaty, we agreed we could go to lower numbers. In the Berlin proposal in 2013, he announced that we could safely go to a one-third reduction, roughly about a thousand nuclear weapons. So, there’s a recognition that we have more than we need, and he believed that it was important that we pursue those reductions because that set an example for other countries, and also would reduce the risk that nuclear weapons would be used. So, there’s a benefit there.
You need extra actions, not just a treaty.
So, the last point, by the United States reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons the president believed – and I believe as well – that we could reduce the risk that nuclear weapons would be used. That was a unilateral decision. But the ability to go to lower numbers, the president believed we could, but he believed it was preferred for the US and Russia to go down together. And that became the big impediment, the big block, because Russia said, “No, we’re not interested in talking about new nuclear weapons; there are too many other issues”. Of course, now they’re interested.
So, I’m not aware of a point where the president said, “I’m really worried we have too many weapons”. He wanted to use reductions in order to make it safer. But during the last few years of the administration, we were very concerned that defense spending was too high, that all of the costs for new systems – nuclear, the F-35, more Aegis destroyers and navy ships – all of these costs were going up and there wasn’t enough money to go around because of the budget control act and because of sequestration. So, I don’t think his focus was we were too much on nuclear. His concern was there’s not enough money, and so every program has to – we have to prioritize. And in his view we could spend less on nuclear and we could spend less on modernization because our priorities could be elsewhere. But again, those were decisions that in the end he didn’t have time to make.
So, we presented to the transition team options that they could choose that would give them the same number of nuclear weapons or the same deterrent value, but with different procurement plans. And that’s something that they have to evaluate.
And people in the Trump team are now thinking about the options?
I think so. I mean, what we’ve been told is that Secretary Mattis is very concerned about this. He doesn’t have a high priority on nuclear issues, but the problem is it’s not clear that the president takes the advice of Secretary Mattis or that Secretary Mattis reflects the president’s thinking. And that’s not unusual. I mean, President Obama, I think, had a very different view in some instances than Secretary Carter and Secretary Hagel. But there was a process, and there was advice and feedback that was given, and in this administration we don’t know how that’s going to work yet. Right now it’s not working very well.
So, I don’t know if you followed the story about President Trump saying that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military. So, they asked General DunfordFootnote15 and Secretary Mattis, and they said, “Well, we haven’t gotten any order from the president. We’ve seen a tweet. That doesn’t – that’s not how policy is made”. So, we have a process problem.
Now, I have two follow-up questions. First, what do you think of how the Senate has dealt with the new START treaty, and how will the ratification deal on the treaty affect modernization? Second, what is the connection between the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and nuclear weapons modernization?
So, it’s a great question because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding. So, when we started to negotiate the New START a couple of the people in the U.S. Senate expressed a lot of concern – mainly Jon Kyl. He is now a retired senator from Arizona who believes the US should have many more nuclear weapons, and that he not only didn’t want to have a bilateral agreement with Russia, but he also did not believe the United States should stop testing nuclear weapons. And so, he opposed the CTBT. He was worried the president was going to seek to get Senate advice and approval for CTBT, and he knew that what the president could offer was modernization money. How would we get, how would we improve and enhance the safety and security of nuclear weapons?
So, when we did New START first Senator Kyl said, “Okay, we’re going to extract every last dollar we can from the administration in commitment so they have nothing left to spend for CTBT”. And people were concerned about this. At the beginning, in 2009 people were coming to the president and saying he should negotiate New START and then submit START and CTBT as a package to the Senate. They wanted to call it the Big Bang.
Who visited the president?
Strobe Talbott.Footnote16 Jessica Matthews.Footnote17 People outside the government were suggesting this as an initiative. And we said, “No, that’s a really bad idea because there is not the consensus for CTBT”. START was expiring and we had to have inspections with Russia – and we’re still, I think – it’s a good thing we have inspections with Russia at this point. But we knew that was a strategy. And the decision was made that we could make commitments for New START, but that wouldn’t affect our ability to get CTBT.
When Jon Kyl came to us and said, “You need to be spending more money on nuclear weapons”, we said, “Yeah, we agree. We’ve not been spending enough”. We even said, “How come you didn’t complain to the Bush administration that they weren’t spending enough. You’re only complaining now to us”. So, during the process of the Senate debate we negotiated with Senator Kyl and other members of the Senate who said that “You need to spend money here and here and here and here”. And they required us to submit a report to Congress – this was the 1251 report. And in it, the president committed to spend $300 billion in new money for the nuclear weapons complex and modernization over 10 years, and that would involve modernizing or life extension programs on ICBMs, submarines, bombers, cruise missiles, all of that.
Could you tell me a little bit more about the 1251 report?
National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, section 1251,Footnote18 said that the president must submit a report to Congress on the modernization of US nuclear forces. It was inserted by Senator Kyl and the Republican Senate, because they wanted to extract a very high price from the executive branch in order to get New START approved.
It was actually very simple, which was the vice president, Biden, was in charge of coordination of New START. His direction was to give Jon Kyl every bit of information he asks for. Be transparent, whatever he asks for, give it to him. And since we support modernization, we are prepared to support their requests. If there are things that we should be spending to maintain the triad, then we support those. So, it’s not a concession. So, essentially, we agreed that we would kill him with kindness.
And I think this was done for two reasons. One, primarily, Vice President Biden understood the dynamic in the Senate. If Jon Kyl could say to his Senate colleagues the administration has refused to provide me with information, they have withheld information, they have refused to support the funding, then it would be very hard for us to get support from any Republicans, the caucus would – so, Vice President Biden understood this.
But at the same point, there was a recognition that if in 2015 the president decided to make the decision that we no longer need ICBMs, or we’d be fine without a new strategic bomber, he could make that decision. This was not a legally binding requirement like the treaty itself. This was a political commitment, and we had flexibility to change it.
Now, interestingly, we made this budget request as indicated, in the next year, 2011. And the Republicans in the House who wanted to reduce the budget deficit refused to fund it. So, Kyle in the Senate, Republicans asked for money. We said okay, and the Republican House said, “No, we won’t fund it”. So, Senator Kyle was playing at this – one, he supported the deterrent, but also what he was trying to do was that he really did not want the United States to approve the comprehensive test ban treaty.
He knew the only chance we had, if we decided to pursue it, was to fund all of the nuclear modernization, and all of the nuclear weapons facility. And so by extracting these promises for New START, he felt that he could prevent us from promising it again when it came to the comprehensive test ban treaty.
About the modernization programs. Did President Obama say that he wanted to change it during his presidency?
At the end of the administration, we had a lot of discussions, particularly the last 6 months, about the costs of these programs. So during 2016, part of what we did in looking at a way to implement the Prague agenda was, “Could we adjust the modernization program? Had it gotten too big? Could we reduce its size?” I think it’s fair to say the president believed that we had more nuclear weapons than we needed, that the modernization costs were spending too much on nuclear at the expense of other conventional requirements, and that he would be comfortable with a reduced modernization program. But he didn’t feel comfortable in the last part of his administration with only several months to go making changes for two reasons.
One is there was no – he wasn’t going to submit a new budget. He wasn’t going – there was no decision that had to be made, so there was nothing immediately for him to change. He would have to create something, and that would be unusual. And, two, the president, I think, did this a number of times where he said, “I respect the office of the president enough that I wouldn’t want to lock in my successor or make it harder for him or her to make a decision, and to give them the freedom to do that”.
And you’d have to ask the president whether he wishes he had done that given the new administration. But he was consistent in that approach.
We’re actually now having a debate in the United States. Republicans are telling Democrats in the Senate, “You have to vote yes for all of the nuclear modernization programs because that was the requirement of New START”. And if you look at the articles of approval and the letter that President Obama sent to the Senate, it does not commit beyond the amount of money in the 1251 report. And the president said it would – President Obama said, “It is my intention as long as I am president to pursue modernization for all three legs of the nuclear triad”.
Well, President Obama left office on January 20. He is no longer president, so there is no longer any commitment to the Senate. So, a number of people in the Obama administration are trying to advise the Democrats that they are under no commitment. They can make their own decision and they should try to evaluate the situation objectively. But – so, it is a debate. But when Kyl said, “You should spend more”, we said, “We agree”. But even Jon Kyl didn’t know it was going to cost over $1 trillion.
How about the connection between the Nuclear Posture Review and nuclear weapons modernization?
Now, in terms of the Nuclear Posture Review, the main commitment we made in it was that we agreed that President Obama would maintain a triad as long as he was president, because we knew that the lifespan of the current systems would stretch beyond his presidency. We also said that there are benefits to having a triad, but that’s obvious. But that was not a commitment that we should always have a triad.
So, I think there is some opportunity for this or future administrations to decide: Do they really need a triad, or can they change the structure? But they have to want to change. I also – I’ve decided I don’t like the term the triad because we actually have a pentad, because we have submarines, we have ICBMs, we have bombers with bombs, we have bombers with missiles, and we have tactical aircraft with bombs. So, we actually have five legs for the nuclear triad, so we can easily shave a couple. It’s no problem. In fact, going to three would be fine.
If the presidency of Obama had been longer – it’s of course a hypothetical question – do you think that he could have changed the modernization plan?
It’s a good question. I don’t think he would have stopped modernization. I think there’s a chance that the president would have either tried to stagger some of the procurement and maybe delay some of the programs, or he might have decided that he wanted to reduce the costs for some of these programs. The president expressed concern that these programs were getting too expensive and he was worried that we hadn’t been cautious enough with our budget. For something to cost $1 billion per bomber, or for something to cost $4 billion per submarine, there was a sense that the program was maybe more advanced than it needed to be or more complicated than it needed to.
But at the same time I think we have to recognize that the president had many opportunities when he was president to make decisions and chose to be very cautious when it came to unilateral decisions to reduce the nuclear arsenal. So, that may have been – in fact, I know it was in large part because when the decision came to him, both at the end of his administration and just before the election in 2012, he did not want to make decisions that would be imposed on his successor. In 2012, there was some thought being given to closing one of the three ICBM bases, that we eliminate 150 ICBMs. And the president made the decision that he wasn’t going to make that decision during the election, because if he won, he could revisit the decision, but if he lost, he couldn’t implement the decision before he left office. And he felt a responsibility to the office not to force his successor to do something.
So, if he had more time, would he have been more personally ambitious? I can’t say. But it was clear that given where we were at the end of the administration, there just wasn’t the time to do what he thought about doing. And it’s a big regret.
And I actually – I feel – I’m always very cautious because I don’t think of myself as having been too important for President Obama. I think he had other much more important advisors. But when I left the administration in 2012, I was really the main person pushing for reductions and advocating for stronger action. And I left for 2 years, and by the time I came back I was still the only person who was pushing. And we were actually able to get some momentum, but I blame myself for leaving for those 2 years and wonder if I had stayed and been consistent whether we maybe would have been more successful. But – and again, it’s the president who makes these decisions. I think he understood them but didn’t always have his staffed focused and giving him options throughout his time in office.
Nuclear Posture Review
The next question is about the Trump NPR (US Department of Defense Citation2018). How do you see it?
I’ve been describing the NPR as it’s like an old Clint Eastwood movie – there’s the good, there’s the bad, and there’s the ugly. The good part is the language on deterrence, that we must make it clear to Russia that they cannot use nuclear weapons first and escape a high price. North Korea, that we can deter North Korea, that they – any use of nuclear weapons would be a suicidal act. That we stand by our alliances. I think all that language is quite good.
And I think there’s – we could have done this at the end of the Obama administration, but again it’s more appropriate for a new administration to come out. But I think there was a recognition that we were concerned about Russian doctrine, and we needed to respond to that. So, I think the language in it is quite good.
I think our nuclear forces are still very appropriately sized. If anything, they’re still more than capable of fulfilling those missions. So, I think the bad part of the NPR is when they get to new nuclear weapons, and the idea that they want to expand the role of nuclear weapons. I forgot one more good. I think it’s very good that they kept the negative security assurance that we will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. I think that’s very appropriate, and I think that’s very helpful.
Is that the same language as in the Obama NPR?
Almost Identical.
Okay.
The bad part is the new weapons. I don’t think low-yield submarine launch missile warheads will be helpful, and I think it will create risks. I don’t think the SLCM is necessary or helpful. And quite frankly, I think under this administration, it raises the risk that President Trump will go to Japan and say, “Okay, you love this so much you pay for it”, so I think you have to be careful. For example, if this weapon is for Japan to reassure them, why don’t they pay the $10 billion to pay for this system? I don’t know for sure, but I think there’s a risk of that.
New sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCM) can cause some political problem in Japan. It runs counter to the so-called Three Non-nuclear Principles.
That’s right. And also, I’m not a big fan of the SLCM. I don’t think it will deter any more than our existing nuclear weapons. I think we’ll complicate some of our operations. It doesn’t raise the threshold. I think it increases the risk of early escalation. It decreases decision time, so I think that will put more pressure on Russia, it will put more pressure on North Korea. And I think more chance of misunderstanding or accident or misinterpreting. Also, the fact that we have conventional cruise missiles, there’s a discrimination problem. So, there’s a challenge. But so I don’t think those weapons themselves lower the threshold. But the expansion of the circumstances, when we might use nuclear weapons, I think does lower the threshold. So, the NPR says that we will now consider the use of nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear strategic attacks. Attacks on command and control, attacks on civilian populations. It could include other cyber, early warning attacks. So, that – it’s designed to put doubt in the mind of an adversary and deter them from doing these things. Additional concern is the NPR says they want to reduce the risk of misinterpretation or the risk of use. But, actually, when they’re not working in that wat – so, it’s contradictory. I think those are the bad things.
And then there’s what I call the ugly, which is President Trump’s behaviour, his language, his loose talk, fire and fury, and destruction like the world has never seen, increases the temperature on all of these conflicts. And you cannot separate the Nuclear Posture Review language from President Trump. And so, when you put low-yield nuclear weapons, smaller nuclear weapons, more scenarios, and then you put it in the context of President Trump, I think it creates the perception that the United States is returning to these early George W. Bush nuke-happy dismissive of arms control, dismissive of non-proliferation.
I think that is overall a very serious negative. I think there is less room for President Trump to manoeuvre, and they tried to do too much. I think if they had just left it at the deterrent language, it would have been fine.
Several factors have contributed to American political support for the new NPR, including industry, the military, Congress, and the President himself. In your view, what is the driving force that changed the NPR?
I think it’s individuals. I think there are people inside the Pentagon who support some new flexibility, some new nuclear capability. They think it’s useful. They really do believe that we need to show Russia that we’re serious. They really need to show Japan and South Korea that we stand by them, that we really are concerned about them. And they view support for nuclear weapons as free.
There’s no negative. There’s no downside to doing it. Right? We’re going to be robust. We tried to be nice, and say we supported a world without nuclear weapons, and look at what Russia did, look at what China did, look at what – so that doesn’t work. They ignore all the other benefits. And so, they say, “Now it’s time to get tough”. And so, I think it’s more individuals. Now, there is industry support. That’s helpful. There is state support, pork barrel politics.
And there’s also – I don’t know what the comparison would be in Japan, but it is we’re going to show North Korea and Russia that they can’t do this to us. We’re going to get tough, right? It’s very macho. And so, this plays to President Trump’s personal tendency. And even reasonable people in the United States, I wouldn’t say progressive, but independents and moderates say, “Yeah, if they’re going to be – if North Korea’s going to be testing nuclear weapons and Russia’s going to be threatening them, we have to show them that we’re serious”.
And they don’t get into the details. So, they don’t know about the risks and the costs and the consequences. So, this is very easy to argue for more, and it’s very hard to argue for compromise and less.
Has the NPR been well accepted among military officials?
I think there’s a mixed review. I think there are people on the progressive side who look at some parts and say, “That’s okay. That could have fit in a Clinton NPR or a Obama NPR if we had done another one”. But generally, on the progressive side, there’s been a strong rejection, because of the new roles, the new missions. I think there’s been a strong – on the conservative side, the people who wrote it, like Keith PayneFootnote19 and Frank Miller,Footnote20 there’s been, I think, a strong acceptance.
This is robust, it’s needed, we’re back in the game, this is a good thing. I think for Congress, for the military, I think there is really a mixed reaction. I think they like the deterrent language. I think they like the talk of alliances. The discrimination problem for low-yield sub launches is real. We had this problem when we talked about conventional warheads for trident missiles. So, I think that’s there.
The Navy has never wanted to re-introduce nuclear weapons to surface ships or to attack submarines. There’s an extra security and operational headache if you’re going to put a nuclear weapon on your ship. You must have Marines to safeguard it and procedures. So, I think there’s some pushback there. And there’s also a question about cost.
This is less of a problem now because the president’s budget and the new congressional agreement is a great increase for the Pentagon’s budget. So, there’s not as much competition between the nuclear and the conventional. But there’s still some limited tension because if you are building drones for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), or missile defences, or training for your naval officers who get into accidents, or you want more surface ships and you don’t have enough money, and you look at these new nuclear weapons and you say, “Well, how come they can get it?”
There’s some tension there. So, I think there’s still a debate going on inside the Pentagon. But generally, I think the perception inside the military is these things – we used to have a TLMN, so new cruise missiles are really not a big deal. We already have submarine launch missiles, so this one’s really not a big deal. So, I think the main opposition will come from the Congress and from some of the non-governmental groups who are worried about Trump and they’re worried about too many nuclear weapons.
If a Democrat candidate regains the presidency, what will be, in your perspective, a possible change in terms of nuclear modernization?
I think there are two ways you can think about modernization changing. And I don’t have the perfect answer – I think there has to be a lot of discussion about this. But you could either change the schedule or you can change the size. So, right now we’re going to build submarines. And then, while we’re building submarines we’re going to build bombers. And then, while we’re building submarines and bombers we’re going to build new missiles. We’re going to do all three at once.
There’s no way we’re going to build all three at once. We just can’t do it. There’s not enough money. The Pentagon cannot manage large, multi-billion-dollar, multiyear programs. Congress will not fund all of them steadily: There will be ups and downs.
And so, one argument is you should schedule them differently. So, one idea is you can make ICBMs last a little bit longer and do some life extension programs until you complete most of the submarine purchases. And then, in 10 years you can see: Do you still need ICBMs? Maybe the situation has changed. Or you can say, “You know what? The growth in air defense is so strong that the Stealth bomber will not be effective, so let’s build a different bomber, a new B-52 that will stand off and not penetrate”. And then, you can do maybe the ICBM and the submarine together but push off the bomber. So, you can change the schedule, and there are lots of different options for how to do that.
The other idea is to change the scope, the numbers. The example I always use is: Right now, we have 400 ICBMs and we want to build another 400 brand new ICBMs. Each ICBM has one warhead. Each ICBM has one warhead because we wanted to encourage Russia to have ICBMs with only one warhead. This is something we started in the 1990s, and in the 2000s we were trying to convince Russia they shouldn’t build big, heavy ICBMs with lots of warheads because those are destabilizing.
More risk of first strike?
Exactly. They’re attractive targets. Russia will worry that one American warhead can kill ten Russian warheads, so they have to launch them first. So, we said, “Well, we’ll just do one. You should do one too”. And they said, “Okay” “Well, maybe”. And then they said, “No, we’re going to build 10”, in part because they also are worried about missile defences. They want to have lots of mobile ones.
Now, we don’t need to have just one. So, we could have 200 ICBMs with 2 warheads each. Or we could have 100 ICBMs with 4 warheads each. It’s much less expensive. And maybe they should be mobile instead of being fixed targets. So, you can change the way you build those systems.
Submarines. Right now we have 14 submarines. The plan is for the United States to build 12 new submarines, but we’re going to build 8. Then, we’re going to stop for a while, and then we’re going to build four more. So, for some period of time we’re going to have eight submarines, and the Pentagon has said that that’s okay. Well, if it’s okay for a little while, why isn’t it okay for the whole time? If you change the operations, keep them out at sea longer, maybe you don’t have one submarine in each ocean – you have one in the Pacific and then you have one in the Atlantic – there are different ways you can change the schedule. So, you may not need as many, and then that will bring the cost down without changing the number or warheads that you could deploy. So, there are options that you could look at, and I think that would have to be a debate.
But right now, the strongest argument is cost. That may change if the economy improves, if other defense programs change, but I think it’s not going to change any time soon. I think we’re still going to be struggling with cost for a long time because these programs are going to get more and more expensive. There’s the Congressional Budget Office report, published in 2017, on the cost of modernization with an estimate that there’s been a 20% increase in the cost of modernization just over the last 3 or 4 years. So, instead of $1 trillion, it’s going to be $1.2 trillion, and we still haven’t started to build anything. So, these programs are going to get very expensive. There will still be pressure, I think.
So, you expect there are ways to modernize or sophisticate the system at lower budget?
There are options. Now, you could also look at much simpler systems that would be less expensive. So, for the B-21 bomber, the research and development program is $45 billion and the procurement is $55 billion. So, for 100 aircraft it’s $550 million for building and $450 million in research, and that is because you want to have a Stealth bomber that can fly over enemy territory. Well, right now the Pentagon is saying that it probably will only be able to penetrate enemy defense for maybe 10 or 15 years because defences are getting better. That’s a huge waste of money. You don’t need to have a Stealth bomber. You could have a cruise missile, a stealth cruise missile that could fly on a slow-flying bomber that you could protect with fighters that we’re going to build anyway. And you could still hold targets in Russia, China, North Korea, Sudan, wherever is at risk, and you could do it at a much lower cost.
There’s another argument that has been made that if you make these weapons only conventional, you don’t even need a pilot. The reason we have a pilot on strategic bombers is because we want a person, a human being to control nuclear weapons until they are launched. So, on a submarine you have a captain, on an ICBM you have the missile launch officer, and in a plane you have the pilot. Well, if they’re conventional only, then you can have drones. You could have thousands of drones at much less cost. Something like 35% or 40% of the cost of the airplane is life support. So, if you don’t have a human being in it, you save a huge amount of money.
So, if you think differently about it, you would have equivalent military capability with greater precision at lower cost. Now, of course, Russia and China are scared of this. Right? That’s why they want nuclear weapons. So, it doesn’t mean that you have stability.
Practice in strategic stability and also in arms control will become much more complex?
That’s right. And more complexity and strategic stability. We’re already building conventional precision weapons. We will have Hyperglide and all these other systems. But that’s true whether or not we have nuclear weapons or conventional weapons. That’s about communication, predictability in the relationship. That’s a much different challenge for us.
But it is unlikely that President Trump would take above-mentioned options seriously.
I think Secretary Mattis is going to look at some of those options. I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news, but the reality is these programs take a long time. And so, depending on how the contracts are written and the program is built, the final decision is not President Trump’s. These are decisions that we will be wrestling with for 20 years. The Congress and the presidents will have to decide what to request and what to fund. At a certain point they may become too expensive and they may change. Or, you may have a different leadership. You may have a different relationship with Russia. I mean, Vladimir Putin could die tomorrow, and you could have a very different type of Russian president. I mean, it’s unpredictable. China – Xi could die tomorrow; you could have a very different Chinese – both good or bad. So, it’s unpredictable. And so, the cost – this is not – it’s not as if there is one decision point. These are multiple – it’s a fluid situation that’s going to keep changing.
“Strategic Patience”
The next question is about the North Korean issue. How do you evaluate the strategy of “Strategic Patience” by the Obama administration?
We recognized even inside the administration that our strategy of getting the North Koreans to stop their program did not work. It was obvious. We wanted them to do less. We wanted them to freeze. We wanted them to negotiate. They didn’t do any of that.
Do you see it as a failure?
That term was used by very senior people, and there’s no doubt that it failed to achieve what we wanted it to achieve. But I hesitate to use the word failure because it suggests that there was a path to success. And this is something that’s very hard for Americans to accept, and it’s something that’s even harder, I think, for Democrats to accept, because we like to fix problems, and we like to believe that we can always fix the problem.
It’s like when men talk to women, right? Men want to fix it, and women just want to be understood. To this day, I don’t believe that the United States could do anything that would have convinced Kim Jong-un to stop his nuclear weapons activities. I think once Kim Jong-il died, a young, untested, insecure new leader decided that this was his way to demonstrate that he was in control, and to build up his base of support, in combination with assassinations and all this other stuff. And so, I think at that point it was clear that there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t drop all sanctions and convince them we weren’t his enemy. We couldn’t launch a war. We couldn’t do anything in between. There was no pathway to success. So, I just don’t like using the world failure because – but there’s no doubt that it didn’t achieve any of the goals that we wanted to achieve.
I think we were more successful than people give us credit for in getting China in, but I think that’s also because Kim Jong-un basically just cut China off and insulted them and embarrassed them, and showed them what we had told them for many years, which is they don’t control the situation, and it will become a problem for them. So, I think we deserve more credit for that than we get, but in the end, I don’t think there was anything that was going to turn off the North Korean nuclear program, at least not after 2011.
In case of Iran, you made a good deal with them. But why not with the DPRK?
Big difference, which is Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons, and we had military options in Iran. North Korea did have nuclear weapons and we didn’t have military options. And also, Iran, while it is not –
There was a change of president.
Well, that helped a lot. There was a desire – but also Iran wants to be integrated into the world. They see themselves as an ancient major power that is wrongly isolated from the rest of the world. North Korea wants to be left alone. They want to be isolated. They don’t want outside influences. And so, cutting Iran off from the international banking system made it very difficult for their children to study overseas and to do business.
Very few North Korean children study overseas. So, the situation is just not – we talked about this. Could we develop a JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action)Footnote21 for North Korea where they could have some enrichment but no weapons? They could have short-range missiles but nothing – and the believe was one, North Korea wasn’t even willing to talk to us at all. And two, what could we offer them that would convince them that they didn’t need nuclear weapons?
We offered them security assurances under George Bush. They didn’t believe it. They felt that they had already crossed the threshold. And so, there was just no evidence, no suggestion, no plausible scenario where we got from where we were to a JCPOA. I think the most we could do was to convince them to pause or freeze their program, but we worried about locking in their nuclear capability and what that would mean for the alliance with South Korea and Japan.
President Trump seems to be more successful in involving China to North Korean issues. Why not during the Obama administration?
I think we did get China involved. I think we did get cooperation on sanctions and enforcement and isolation. And so, I think they are capitalizing in part on some of the work that we did to bring China in. But I think there’s a big difference, which is the United States, under President Obama, was trying to convince China to take some ownership of the international system.
And North Korea was a threat to that system. President Trump, I think, has indicated to China that they can rewrite the rules however they see fit. China has a pretty free hand at this point, and you’re seeing this now with President Xi announcing no limits to his time in office. Our rejection of the TPP which gives China then the opportunity to build their own Asian development bank.
So, I think in the end, China will say, “Okay, we’ll go along. We’ll put some pressure on North Korea to make sure that Trump doesn’t do anything dangerous. He doesn’t provoke a war. But we don’t trust either of these guys now”. Before, I think there was some element of trust with the Obama administration that we weren’t going to provoke a crisis. And so, they were willing to do more with us than I think they will be willing to do over the long run with Trump.
There is no meeting of the minds between Trump and Xi. It is completely transactional. And I think – I don’t know that North Korea was ours to lose. I think – my personal view is we gave up North Korea in 2002 when we walked away from the agreed framework. But I think it’ll be much harder for us to convince China after Trump leaves office to do more because they won’t know where the United States is really headed. I think this is a big blow to our role in the Asia Pacific.
The Obama administration did not consider that military options were realistic. Do you still think that it is almost impossible to wipe out North Korea’s nuclear capability?
That’s impossible. If the goal is to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear capability, there’s no way to achieve that through military means. Period. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know how many they’ve built. We don’t even know where all of their production facilities are. We don’t know where all of their missile facilities are.
But I’d even go further, which is even if you could – let’s say there was a military parade and they wanted to put them all up, they were dumb enough to put them all in a parade. We knew it and we destroyed them. They could still destroy Seoul. They could still conventionally or chemically or biologically attack Tokyo. They could still smuggle in commandos and chemical and biological weapons in the United States.
So, if the goal is to prevent North Korea from doing damage to our allies and ourselves, even the elimination of nuclear weapons doesn’t get us there. We have been in a deterrent relationship with North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Nuclear weapons don’t change that fundamental fact. They just make the potential destruction more immediate and more devastating.
This is a very hypothetical question. In case of war with North Korea, should the current DPRK regime collapse, the territory that it currently controls would become politically empty. If that were to happen, who would take care of that space?
It’s very hypothetical, so I can just give you my personal opinion. I don’t see a scenario where China sees a war coming or where if a war has started that they allow the United States or South Korea to control the entire peninsula. I think they will install their own leadership, or they will install their own protectorate over North Korea to ensure that the status quo doesn’t change. I just don’t see it.
China is worried about a US military presence on their border. They’re worried about a reunified Korean peninsula under South Korea. So, I just don’t see China supporting that. And I think the United States military is sensitive enough to China’s likely behaviour that they will not want to come into direct clash with China’s military.
So, this always points to well how can we do advanced coordination with China? Can we do planning now? Everybody wants to do more, and China’s not ready, but there’s been at least some discussions with China about how to do this. If China was napping or this came so – we could do this in one day and we just flush it out and it’s all over, the United States supports the unification of the Korean peninsula under South Korean democratic rule. And so, I think we would be –
The US troops will withdraw?
No, I don’t think so. I mean, and in fact, many years ago, I want to say maybe back in 1990, the Chinese government even said at the time that they would support the continued deployment of US troops on the Korean peninsula even after unification. Now whether that’s true or not now, it’s 20 years later. But there at least was some recognition, just as I think China found some comfort in the continued US military presence in Japan, I think they would find the same.
And I think, quite frankly, Japan would find some comfort in that. And I think South Korea would want it for some time, too. But over time it would become a real question, why are we there. Now of course most people realize this too, even the South Koreans don’t support reunification because they worry about the economic burden.
And so, I think most countries privately will tell you they’re comfortable with the continued division even if morally and politically we believe that it should be reunified under a democratic system. But I just don’t see how and why China would let the peninsula become united through force. If Kim said, “All right, fine, you win. I want to have a democratic open system”, I don’t think China could object them, but they would still have some means to influence the nature of that reunification.
The governments of Japan, South Korea, the US and others are making efforts to achieve de-nuclearization of the DPRK. That is the goal, but it will not happen overnight. It will take time. Therefore, we need a process to get to this goal. When we start a new dialogue, what kind of language is possible? Is discussing a nuclear freeze at the first stage of talks too sensitive?
I don’t know if freezing is as sensitive as it was before, right? Before we didn’t want to accept a freeze because mainly we didn’t want to increase the domestic political pressure in South Korea to go nuclear, that they would have to match North Korea. I think that dynamic has changed a little bit under Moon Jae-in, right?
He’s willing to accept that. I think they’re willing to – if we could make progress and we could avoid the risk of war, because they really do worry Trump is going to start a war. So, I think a freeze is more acceptable now in South Korea. I don’t know what the reaction would be in Japan. But my guess is we could finesse that. We could talk about it being an interim freeze or a – not a permanent or prolonged freeze. We’d have to find some language.
But here’s my problem, which is I can get a freeze on missile testing, I can get a freeze on nuclear weapons testing. I don’t know how to get a freeze on weapons production or nuclear material production, because we don’t know where it all is. I don’t know how to get a freeze on missile production because I don’t know all the material. So, just getting to a weapons freeze would require a level of transparency that North Korea has never been willing to provide. And so, that’s a real challenge for me. And I just don’t know how we get there, and I don’t know what North Korea would want for it. I think it would be better than today, but I don’t know how much better. I think what we need to start with is the military communication, the political communication, the de-escalation dialogue so we can turn off accidents. And then if we can have some of that contact, then we might be able to gain some insight into North Korean thinking, are there opportunities here?
I can’t accept that Kim Jong-un’s only wish in life is to have nuclear weapons and be left along. I have to believe that he thinks there’s something more. And so, if that’s economic development, is that following a Chinese model, is it competing with the south? I don’t know what it is, but there has to be some trade space there. We’ll never know until we can get into some sort of dialogue.
Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
The next question is about the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.Footnote22 May I ask about your view on the treaty? Actually, nuclear weapons states including the US didn’t join the debate at the UN. Neither did Japan, South Korea or all the other US allies except the Netherlands. Nevertheless the treaty was adopted in the UN. So, what do you think of this situation?
Well, it is adopted, but everybody believes that it cannot be moved forward without these five states, nuclear umbrella states and other nuclear armed states.
The treaty was adopted and it says that it becomes effective when 50 states join the treaty. They’ll get 50 states like that. Right? Vanuatu, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Austria – they’ll all sign, so it’s going to go into force. But it will have no effect on nuclear weapon states. And I think the only effect it will have on allies is the political debate. Right? So, in Holland the Labour Party supported the Ban Treaty, so that puts pressure on the foreign minister. But I notice they never appoint the foreign minister from the Labour Party because they need somebody who’s focused and serious.
So, I don’t think the treaty will have any practical effect on nuclear weapon states or their allies. I think it will have a very divisive effect on the Non-Proliferation Treaty and it will make the debate much harder to define solutions that everybody can support. And that is by design. I am now convinced that the organizers of the Ban want to discredit the NPT and the other existing vehicles for disarmament like the Conference on Disarmament and the First Committee at the UN so they can create something new that they believe will force nuclear weapon states to behave differently. And I think that is not going to happen. I understand the frustration and I think the desire comes from the right place, to eliminate nuclear weapons, but I think it’s disconnected and divorced from reality. And I think it will make it much harder for us to, quite frankly, make progress on both non-proliferation and disarmament.
Do you not believe this treaty will have impact on the US nuclear deterrent policy?
The United States under President Obama was extremely forward-leaning in supporting disarmament and non-proliferation and global responsibility. The president himself talked about our unique, special, moral responsibility, and even we looked at the Ban and said, “This is not only – not only is it not helpful, it’s harmful. It is counterproductive to our goals of achieving disarmament and to effecting non-proliferation”. And so, I think it has no political resonance in the United States. Almost nobody is marching in the streets for the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. Most people don’t even know that it’s happened. So, this is not like 1981 where we had a million people marching in the street for the Nuclear Freeze issue. It’s just not a politically salient issue. And I don’t think it’s likely to have much effect on operations. So, I don’t think it will have much of an effect on the ability of the United States to protect its allies.
Now, where it, again, will have an effect is if politically countries like Japan or Holland or elsewhere decide that “Well, we can’t ignore the Ban; politically we have to support it or we have to affiliate with it”, and that prevents the transit of nuclear weapons or prevents the stationing of nuclear weapons. That may affect operations.
But you have a bigger problem with that, which is that the treaty also bans making threats to use nuclear weapons, which is of course what deterrence is based on. So, it means any country that signs it cannot be part of an extended deterrence relationship. So, I think in some ways that makes it very easy for Japan, unless the political climate changes dramatically.
So, how do you think of the so-called stigmatization of nuclear weapons?
I think other than Japan, where there really is a strong taboo against nuclear possession – there really isn’t much of a taboo against nuclear possession. In South Korea I don’t think it’s much of an issue. Even in Germany, most of Europe, I just don’t think so.
I think the taboo is mainly around nuclear use. And so, possession is not as stigmatized. Now, does the Ban help that? I have trouble thinking of states that aren’t already members of a nuclear weapons-free zone or the NPT who will sign onto this treaty whose commitments are enhanced in any way? I just – I don’t know what it adds. And quite frankly, it creates an opportunity which is dangerous – I actually hadn’t put it into words yet, but I think this is worth thinking about. If Donald Trump says, “Now that there’s a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, our commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty is as written, that we will seek to negotiations in good faith to end the arms race and general and complete disarmament. But we are not legally committed to eliminate nuclear weapons. There’s nothing in the NPT that requires that”. Chris FordFootnote23 maintains that review conference statements are politically binding but have no legal binding force. So, the 2010 Action Plan, the 2000 statement by President Clinton have no legally binding effect. And therefore, they could say, “If and when the United States decides that it wants to eliminate nuclear weapons, it will consider joining the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty. But until then, we are no longer bound to pursue nuclear disarmament. Period”.
That doesn’t really help. Right? I mean, it makes things a lot worse. But it’s exactly what the treaty opens up. It gives nuclear weapon states an option to say, “Well, okay, if you feel that there’s no legal obligation in the NPT, that’s not us saying it; that’s you saying it. And if we want to make a new commitment, then we’ll come back and talk to you”.
I’m trying to be charitable to the organizers of the Ban, but I really think they have made a major mistake, and I think it does a lot of potential damage to the system. And most importantly, I think it is a transparent effort by non-nuclear weapon states to get nuclear weapon states to do more without doing anything new themselves. So, if you look at the safeguards obligation, it simply says, well, they’ll just agree to maintain whatever safeguards they currently have in place. But it doesn’t adopt additional protocol. It doesn’t have any obligation to impose penalties on proliferators. So, it’s really – they get a complete pass. And when countries like Holland, Sweden or Switzerland made suggestions they were rejected without any explanation for why those requests were excluded, but other requests – when it came to threats – made by other states were included. So, I just don’t view it as being a really democratic or an open process. So, I’m not a big Ban fan.
But, in the long term, the US can maintain a supremacy in conventional weapons and have a better position in terms of the Ban treaty. Even without nuclear arsenals, the US and its allies will be able to have a strong capability.
That’s what we say today. The reason President Obama thinks we should get rid of nuclear weapons is because if everybody else does it, we win. We have the conventional capability now, and we will stay ahead if we want to. The Ban Treaty doesn’t change that dynamic, so I think we can maintain that, and we should.
Then why not support the Ban? The United States could say, “We will support the Ban if all the other nuclear weapon states and North Korea and India and Pakistan and Israel…” We could say that. I mean, maybe we will change our position. But that assumes everybody is playing fair. But they’re not. What will happen as soon as the United States says that we support the Ban in theory, people in the Ban treaty movement will say, “Okay, great. Poland, you don’t have any nuclear weapons on your territory. Why don’t you sign the Ban?” They’ll create political forces. And countries that want to disrupt NATO will form civil society movements to support the Ban, just like they did in the Cold War when they supported the Nuclear Freeze movement, to divide the alliance. If we show any flexibility, it only makes it easier for our adversaries to make our alliance harder.
Now, the one thing I think we can do that would be helpful is we are going to have the treaty, it is going to go into force, and members of the Ban will show up at the NPT and say, “We want to reflect in the review conference document our support for the treaty”. And the United States is going to say, “No way”, and so there will be no consensus document. And that will – that is what the adversaries of the NPT want.
So, I do think we have an opportunity, and in fact an obligation, to try and find some language for the next NPT review conference in 2020. How can we reflect the existence of the Ban Treaty and find language before we get to the NPT that’s acceptable the largest group? The United States and Russia – and France, who hates the Ban even more than we do – and Japan and Holland and other countries that support the overall idea and Mexico and Austria can find something they agree to? In the end, I think Egypt will sign the Ban Treaty and they will insist that the final document of the next NPT review conference should have very strong language, because for them the NPT is useless as it doesn’t affect Israel. So, we’re in for a pretty bumpy road, and I think the Ban Treaty is going to be a club that countries use against both the NPT and against us for a long time.
For international movements that advocate the Ban Treaty, the most effective target is the United States and its allies where there is democracy and the voice of people is supposed to be heard.
That’s true. And they even admit this. They say – when I would go to people pushing the Ban Treaty, I’d say, “Well, why don’t you go – I understand you’re coming to us and you want support. Why don’t you go and complain to Russia about violating the INF Treaty? Or, why don’t you go and talk to North Korea?” And they’re like, “Well, they don’t listen to us”. We say, “Okay, so you’re going to come into our house and screw with our… because they won’t let you onto their property?” I mean, that doesn’t make any sense at all.
The United States could be very cynical. We could say, “The Ban is a great thing. We’re going to join. And you say that we have to give you a time-bound commitment? We will eliminate our nuclear weapons in 175 years. And this is how we’re going to do it, and this is how long it’s going to take. And we’re good. We’re committed”. And leave it at that. And then, when they say, “But you’re threatening to use nuclear weapons”, we’re like, “Well, that was just – you know, for non-nuclear weapon states there’s no consensus in the treaty about exactly how this language is defined and applied”, I mean, we could break the treaty. We could leave it in disarray. I think it’s better just to ignore it, quite frankly. I really think that within a few years it is not going to be a very viable – I think it will come to a head in 2020 at the review conference. I think it will be a big issue at this conference and then I think it will just be forgotten.
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tomoko Kurokawa
Tomoko Kurokawa works with Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), one of the major nationwide TV stations in Japan, since 1996. She is an experienced journalist in covering nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and nuclear energy issues. She was a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) from 2012 through 2013. Now she is a non-resident scholar of CEIP.
Notes
1 An American diplomat. He was Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (2015–2017).
2 A former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Johnson served as an intelligence liaison to two secretaries of state and was awarded the US Department of State’s Superior Honor Award in 2011 for outstanding support to the secretary.
3 Remarks by the Vice President on nuclear security, 11 January 2017: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/12/remarks-vice-president-nuclear-security.
4 The 2017 G20 Hamburg summit, held on 7–8 July 2017, in Hamburg, Germany.
5 A so-called No First Use pledge “refers to any authoritative statement by a nuclear weapon state to never be the first to use these weapons in a conflict, reserving them strictly to retaliate in the aftermath of a nuclear attack against its territory or military personnel.” See https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/no-first-use-and-nuclear-weapons.
6 “[The] Obama team considered, but did not adopt, a policy that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack. It rejected “sole purpose” primarily because of concerns about how US allies might respond” (Fetter and Wolfsthal Citation2018).
7 Remarks by President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, 19 June 2013:
8 Susan Rice served in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet as US ambassador to the United Nations and as national security adviser.
9 Avril Haines served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. See https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/avril-haines.
10 William Perry was the nineteenth US Secretary of Defense, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as deputy secretary of defense (1993–1994) and as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering (1977–1981). See https://www.hoover.org/profiles/william-j-perry.
11 Richard Garwin was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee during the years 1962–1965 and 1969–1972, and of the Defense Science Board from 1966 to 1969. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the IEEE and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Philosophical Society. See https://fas.org/rlg/.
12 “The Extended Deterrence Dialogue provides an opportunity for the two governments [the United States and Japan] to frankly exchange views on how to enhance alliance deterrence as part of their security and defense cooperation. Through this dialogue, the Government of Japan, a recipient of US extended deterrence, can deepen its understanding of the US deterrence policy and bilateral coordination in an increasingly complex security environment. The two governments have long been discussing deterrence issues in various fora, and this Extended Deterrence Dialogue has been held on a regular basis since 2010”. Foreign Ministry of Japan press release: https://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_001625.html.
13 Bernard Baruch, on behalf of the United States, presented a proposal to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) about the international control of atomic weapons, which would become the Baruch Plan. For details about this plan, see http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/kucera1/.
14 The Obama administration’s NPR in 2010 “was also mandated by Congress, but the Defense Department was specifically tasked to conduct an inter-agency review. Besides the unprecedented level of such cooperation, a bipartisan Congressional commission also laid out a number of recommendations for the review process, many of which became part of the final text of the Obama review. Officials from State, Energy, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were involved, as well as US allies who were regularly briefed during the different stages of the review” (Péczeli Citation2017). For the complete text of the 2010 NPR, see US Department of Defense (Citation2010).
15 General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. is the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking US military officer, and the principal military advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Council. See https://dod.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography-View/article/621329/general-joseph-f-dunford-jr/.
16 Strobe Talbott served in the Clinton administration’s State Department from 1993 to 2001, first as ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the secretary of state for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, and then as deputy secretary of state for 7 years. He was president of the Brookings Institution from July 2002 to October 2017. See https://www.brookings.edu/experts/strobe-talbott/.
17 Jessica Mathews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as the endowment’s president for 18 years. She was director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington program and a senior fellow from 1994 to 1997. Her article “Power Shift” for Foreign Affairs in 1997 was chosen by the editors as one of the most influential in the journal’s 75 years. See http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/18.
18 For details about the Section 1251 report, see https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/495.
19 Keith Payne is president and cofounder of the National Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit research centre located in Fairfax, Virginia. He served in the US Department of Defense as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy.
See http://www.nipp.org/professional-staff/dr-keith-b-payne/.
20 Franklin C. Miller served for 31 years in the US government, including 4 years as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush. See https://www.scowcroft.com/principal/franklin-c-miller.
21 The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a multilateral agreement among the P5 + 1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the European Union (EU), and Iran to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. See https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/.
22 The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted in July 2017, includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions against participating in any nuclear weapons activities. These include commitments not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. See https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/.
23 Christopher Ford is Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation. He also served as Special Assistant to President Trump. See https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/276938.html.
References
- Fetter, S., and J. Wolfsthal. 2018. “No First Use and Credible Deterrence.” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 1 (1): 102–114. doi:10.1080/25751654.2018.1454257.
- Fitzgerald, F. 2001. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- Péczeli, A. 2017. Broad Approach Urged for US Nuclear Review. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/broad-approach-urged-us-nuclear-review
- Shultz, G. P., W. J. Perry, H. A. Kissinger, and S. Nunn. January 4 2007. “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116787515251566636
- US Department of Defense. 2010. Nuclear Posture Review Report. Washington DC: US Department of State. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/2010_Nuclear_Posture_Review_Report.pdf
- US Department of Defense. 2018. Nuclear Posture Review Report. Washington DC: US Department of State. https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF