Obama’s Nuclear Modesty/Just Like Ike (on Deterrence)

Obama’s Nuclear Modesty
By PETER D. FEAVER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/opinion/09feaver.html?ref=opinion


Durham, N.C.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S new policy on the use of atomic weapons, called the Nuclear Posture Review, has brought to the public eye a longstanding debate over what’s known as “declaratory doctrine”: what the United States government is willing to say publicly and in advance about the conditions under which it will use its nuclear arsenal. A calm reading of the document shows that the changes in terms of doctrine aren’t nearly as epochal as the White House would have us believe or its critics would have us fear.

The administration claims this new declaration will create strong incentives for states to eschew nuclear weapons. Critics, many of them my fellow Republicans, claim it substantially weakens America’s deterrence against attacks with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. My view is that the new policy buys a trivial new incentive at the cost of a modest loss in deterrence. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the bargain is worth it, but it is a bargain on the margins.

This is the key sentence from the posture review: “The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.”

This apparently walks back from a Bush-era declaration that underscored the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons if it suffered a chemical or biological attack. Instead, the Obama administration is saying it will respond to chemical or biological assaults only with “a devastating conventional military response.”

The administration’s defenders have promoted this as a bold step in fulfilling the president’s commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security strategy. Critics see it as a reckless act of self-constraint. But there is less here than meets the eye.

First, under the declaration, America still threatens to use nuclear weapons against nuclear states that are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — read: Russia and China — if they hit us with a nuclear weapon or with a chemical, biological or cyber-attack.

Second, the United States leaves open the possibility that it will use nuclear weapons against “non-state actors” (think Al Qaeda) who seek weapons of mass destruction. Since non-state actors reside within actual nations, this means that our strike might hit the territory of those states offering a safe haven, regardless of their status under the nonproliferation treaty.

Third, the new doctrine clearly implies that the United States reserves the right to threaten to use nuclear weapons against states that are not party to the nonproliferation treaty. And, of course, it explicitly states that the no-nukes assurance does not apply to states that are in violation of the treaty, a list that includes Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Crucially, since the new policy does not delineate what it means for states to be “in compliance” with the nonproliferation treaty, the United States has a major loophole. Presumably, the Obama administration will not take a potential target’s word on whether it is meeting the obligations — after all, Iran claims to be in compliance with the treaty, while the Nuclear Posture Review explicitly notes that it is not.

Some worry that for the purposes of this doctrine the Obama administration would be limited by the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty designating the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency as the arbiters of who is in compliance. If so, that would seem to tie Washington’s hands. But the new doctrine, in fact, is coy on this point. I suspect the White House intends to do what every previous administration has done: reserve the right to determine for itself what constitutes compliance when making security decisions.

Thus the most controversial part of the new policy boils down to this: we will not threaten to use nuclear weapons against a state that launches a non-nuclear attack against us unless we deem it to be in violation of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations.

And the Obama administration even gave itself an escape clause from that limited rule. “Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development,” the new policy reads, “the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat.”

It’s a rather dense clause, but in explaining it, White House officials drew a distinction between non-nuclear threats that they view as only “crippling” and potential threats that might be “devastating.” They made clear that the administration reserves the right to determine which sorts of attacks might cross that line into “devastating,” and thus warrant a nuclear response.

So, is the entire declaratory doctrine a meaningless exercise in rhetoric? Not entirely. For one, it does weaken our deterrence ability slightly. Deterrence depends on an adversary fearing that we will respond in a devastating way to an attack. Policy makers like to think of our nuclear deterrence strategy as an “umbrella,” one that includes scenarios that the adversary is certain will engender our nuclear response, and others in which it believes that the chances of retaliation are too high to risk.

If adversaries believe what is stated in the new Obama doctrine, the umbrella is a bit smaller, with fewer scenarios in both the “certain" and the “likely enough” categories. Thus, when it comes to strategic ambiguity, the critics have a point. (Paradoxically, the more our adversaries buy into the administration’s spin that this is a drastic change, the stronger the critics’ point. If adversaries stick to a lawyerly reading of the text, the critique loses force.)

In the final analysis, what may be most important about the new doctrine is the light it shines on the assumptions and strategic logic that motivate the national security thinking of the Obama administration. The administration clearly believes that announcing new limits on our nuclear posture will be a strong reason for rogue states to become compliant. This seems hopelessly idealistic: we’ve given Iran and North Korea plenty of stronger incentives, with no progress.

Nonetheless, all the loopholes the administration has built into the new declaration seem a tacit acknowledgment that it understands that such idealism is not a reliable guarantor of American national security. President Obama may be willing to oversell his new doctrine for symbolic value, but a careful reading of the policy shows that he is duly wary of selling out the national security of the United States.


Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke, was on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.



Just Like Ike (on Deterrence)
By CAMPBELL CRAIG
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/opinion/09craig.html?ref=opinion


Aberystwyth , Wales


IN the spring of 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made a sweeping change in the American approach to nuclear war. Henceforth, the United States would rule out waging nuclear war against non-nuclear states. It would eliminate the “ambiguity” of previous strategies, drawing a stark line between conventional and nuclear wars. And the primary role of nuclear weapons would henceforth be to deter nuclear war: to indicate to American adversaries (namely, the Soviet Union) that any attack would engender overwhelming retaliation and hence amount to national suicide.

Many critics attacked the move for appearing to rule out any kind of war — nuclear or conventional — with the Soviet Union. How could the United States then stand up to the Russians? But mutual assured destruction became America’s de facto policy for the rest of the cold war, which ended when the Russians gave up.

Eisenhower had no grand objective in installing this policy. Rather, he had become worried by a growing clamor emanating from the Pentagon, supported by “wizard of Armageddon” intellectuals like Henry Kissinger and Democrats keen on retaking the White House, that the United States could wage, and win, a “limited” nuclear war. That notion had to be nipped in the bud, so that if there were a showdown with Moscow no one would be tempted to actually use one of those bombs. If that happened, Eisenhower firmly believed, the war would inexorably escalate into a thermonuclear holocaust.

On Monday, President Obama announced, in his Nuclear Posture Review, a new American approach to nuclear war that comes right out of Eisenhower’s playbook. And, indeed, Mr. Obama quickly came under criticism from those who have argued that new American technologies, together with the diminished capacity of traditional adversaries, have now made nuclear war winnable.

These critics also assert, just as their predecessors did in the 1950s, that limits on the use of atomic weapons somehow make a nuclear war more likely. “By further unilaterally limiting the circumstances in which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons to protect itself and its allies,” warned John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador, “the Obama administration is in fact increasing international instability and the risks of future conflicts.”

Like Eisenhower, Mr. Obama rejects this claim, realizing that an “ambiguous” approach to nuclear weapons will make nuclear war more thinkable.

Yet in the long run, Mr. Obama wants to do Eisenhower one better: his aim is to abolish nuclear weapons. He knows that only the United States, the world’s pre-eminent power, could bring about and enforce total nonproliferation. If the rest of the world is going to trust America to supervise a nuclear-free world, it hardly needs to be said that the United States must forgo using its vast nuclear arsenal for any political or military purpose save basic deterrence. Mr. Obama’s new nuclear posture and his recent arms control deal with Russia indicate not only that he understands this fact, but also that he, like Eisenhower, is willing to accept political risk in exchange for nuclear peace.

Campbell Craig, a professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University, is the co-author of “America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity.”