2/18/10

With a new and ever changing enemy, Cold War weapons no longer protect us.  The possibility that a terrorist organization could buy or steal a nuclear weapon is far too great. Less than two weeks before the rollout of the Nuclear Posture Review, Vice President Biden will take the stage today at the National Defense University to reiterate the steps the administration is taking to advance U.S. national security interests and reduce the threat of nuclear weapons.  Last year in Prague, President Obama pledged to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.  A comprehensive nuclear security agenda has since been put into motion to bring our national security strategy into the 21^st century.  Military and foreign policy experts from both sides of the aisle support the strategy, calling for reducing our nuclear stockpile with the aim of eventually eliminating nuclear weapons.  Despite the broad, bipartisan consensus from national security experts that nuclear terrorism represents the single greatest threat to our security, some conservatives have put politics ahead of our security and attempted to derail efforts to reduce these risks. 

Nuclear security agenda key part of 21^st century national security. Several specific steps have been outlined by the administration to strengthen our national security and move our nonproliferation policy into the 21^st century.

Reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism: The 9/11 commission and subsequent reports present a sobering reminder that al Qaeda is continuing its quest to obtain weapons of mass destruction and that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real. The United States and Russia hold more than 95% of the world's nuclear weapons.  Maintaining excess warheads and delivery systems increases the possibility that a terrorist organization could buy or steal a nuclear weapon.  The administration is finalizing a new START agreement with Russia that will reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism by helping to verify, control and eliminate vulnerable nuclear materials that could fall into the hands of extremists. 

Stop the spread of nuclear weapons through coordinated, multilateral efforts. Intransigent states like Iran and North Korea require multilateral-not unilateral-action. Efforts to "reset" relations with Russia have facilitated deeper cooperation on issues dealing with Iran's nuclear program. Earlier this week, the U.S. France, and Russia sent a joint letter to IAEA Director General Amano stating, "Iran's enrichment of its LEU stockpile to higher levels is not only unnecessary, but would serve to further undermine the confidence of the international community in Iran's actions." The U.S is also leading efforts to make the upcoming Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference successful. [IAEA letter via Politico, 2/12/10. Deepti Choubey, 11/09]

The administration is making the security of nuclear materials a global priority, by bringing together forty nations in April for a Nuclear Security Summit that focuses on keeping vulnerable nuclear materials out of hands of terrorists. [Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, 1/26/10]

Maintain safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. The 2011 national security budget makes 21^st century investments to implement the bipartisan agenda for preventing the spread or use of nuclear weapons.  Funding for the people and facilities that maintain our safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal is set to increase-with an injection of $600 million in the coming fiscal year for nonproliferation and stockpile stewardship programs. Independent technical assessments have already confirmed the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  Coupled with the increase in funding, this reinforces our ability to maintain a reliable arsenal for years to come-without resuming nuclear testing or building newly-designed nuclear warheads.  [ACA, 11/09.]

Strong, bipartisan support for nuclear security agenda. There is widespread agreement among the most senior national security figures in the U.S. that America's nonproliferation policy needs to be revised to meet the needs of the 21^st century. 

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell: "The more I got into nuclear weapons. The more I realized that these weapons must never be used...The one thing that I convinced myself after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless. They could not be used...This is the moment when we have to move forward and all of us come together to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and eliminate them from the face of the earth." [Colin Powell, 1/27/10]

Four horsemen of nuclear disarmament, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn: "The four of us have come together, now joined by many others, to support a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately to end them as a threat to the world. We do so in recognition of a clear and threatening development. The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how, and nuclear material has brought us to a tipping point. We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands." [Kissinger, Shultz, Perry, Nunn, via the WSJ, 1/19/10]

Bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations task force noted: "The overarching strategy to prevent terrorists and more states from acquiring nuclear weapons involves strengthening the nonproliferation regime, stopping the production of fissile material for weapons purposes, controlling the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies, and securing and reducing, as much as possible, nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials." [CFR Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, 05/09]

Former National Security Advisor Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, former Deputy Secretary of State and President of the Brookings Institution Strobe Talbott: "The United States faces the urgent challenge of using the year ahead to limit the risks of nuclear proliferation and to lower the level of nuclear weapons in the world. Achieving these goals is crucial to a peaceful century." [Scowcroft, Nye, Talbott, via Politico, 10/13/09]

Conservatives play politics, ignoring national security realities. Conservatives in Congress and punditry ignore the dangers of proliferation.  They advocate the development of more nuclear weapons we don't need while obstructing efforts to work with other countries to reduce their arsenals and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and material.  Yesterday, in an attempt to derail the ongoing START negotiations, Senators Kyl, Lieberman and McCain tried link missile defense to the offensive arms agreement.  In a letter to National Security Advisor General Jones they expressing saying, "We ask for your assurance that the Administration will not agree to any such provisions, even a unilateral Russian declaration, in the treaty text or otherwise that could limit U.S. missile defenses in any way."  Meanwhile, it has been clear from the outset that START follow-on will only limit strategic offensive arms. Similarly at the end of last year, Jon Kyl led his conservative colleagues in the Senate to try and obstruct treaty negotiations with Russia by saying they could only support a new START treaty if the President agreed to build new unnecessary nuclear weapons. However, as Max Bergmann of the Center for American Progress explains, "A Congressionally-commissioned study made up of independent scientists concluded just last month that the US nuclear arsenal is in fact in very fine shape. The study concluded that the programs in place to maintain the effectiveness of the US nuclear arsenal - a program called the Life Extension Program (LEP) - is highly effective."

Sen. Jon Kyl also recently colluded with one of the neoconservative architects of the Iraq War, Richard Perle, to argue that in order to reduce our arsenal we must first increase it.  Their rationale is, that "By neglecting -- and in some cases even opposing -- essential modernization programs, arms-control proponents are actually undermining the prospect for further reductions of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. As our nuclear weapons stockpile ages and concern about its reliability increases, we will have to compensate by retaining more nuclear weapons than would otherwise be the case."  Perle's neoconservative colleague, the never-confirmed Bush administration UN Ambassador John Bolton, similarly rails against nonproliferation efforts.  He recently wrote: "What warrants close attention is the jarring naïveté of arguing that reducing our capabilities will inhibit nuclear proliferators." This is the same man who said that "There's not that much difference between me and the people who want a world where no government has nuclear weapons. There's not much difference. I only want one government to have nuclear weapons..." The United States. [Jon Kyl, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain, 2/17/10. Max Bergmann, 12/18/09. Jon Kyl and Richard Perle, Wall Street Journal, 6/30/09. John Bolton, via the Washington Note, 7/31/09]

What We're Reading

Afghan and coalition officials are preparing what they say is the most important phase of the operation to secure the southern town of Marjah: rolling out a new administration and pouring millions of dollars into a place held by the Taliban for the past two years. But they will have to fight off the Taliban's snipers first.

In what appeared to be the first burst of activism in months not related to the disputed presidential election, about 1,200 Iranians signed a statement against a bill that would further curb women's rights.

A high court in Ukraine began Wednesday to consider Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko's request to overturn the results of the country's presidential election, which she narrowly lost.

Veterans groups are speaking out against the use of "burn pits," fires used to burn trash in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying the practice has caused a range of health problems.

Pressure is mounting on Israel to respond to accusations that its spy agency, Mossad, played a role in the killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai last month, and Israeli analysts are offering surprisingly sharp criticism of the matter.

More violence in the run-up to election season in Iraq: a suicide bomber hit a checkpoint in Ramadi, killing at least 10.

UN officials say the US is unreasonably withholding aid to Somalia on the grounds that it might fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

A Haitian judge on Wednesday ordered the release of 8 of the 10 Americans arrested on child abduction charges but decided that two members of the group, including its leader, would remain in jail for additional questioning.

Irking India, China is broadening ties with Nepal.

The head of the UN climate convention, Yvo de Boer, has announced that he'll resign as of July first.

Commentary of the Day

Lara Dadkhah discusses the paradox of how a counter-insurgency strategy ties the hands of our military when it comes to using America's overwhelming air power.

The New York Times editorial board says the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is a sign that President Obama's investment in Pakistan is bearing fruit, but the relationship is still complicated.

Richard Posner describes how the US debt situation is as much a political problem as an economic problem.