Author: Ben Dalgetty
Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world is welcome news from a Washington long bereft of any long-term policy planning. Nuclear weapons, wherever they may be, are anachronisms of a dated global security outlook. Unfortunately, for the past 60-odd years nuclear weapons have also been the foundation of much of our national security strategy and are still the most powerful defensive weapons in existence.
Nuclear weapons are not going to disappear any time soon. But, if the U.S. hopes to successfully advocate nuclear non-proliferation (as it should) we need to drastically decrease the size of our arsenal and build a small generation of weapons designed for long-term security and storage.
The terms of the debate between deterrence and disarmament have been frozen in nuclear winter since before the last bomb detonated over Nagasaki. Deterrence advocates, most notably University of Chicago Professor John Mearscheimer, hold that the world is inherently anarchic, but still rational.
Nuclear weapons have been controlled by individuals and institutions acting in their own rational self-interest. To date, this theory has worked, and for the most part no country armed with nukes has suffered a serious inter-state conflict not of their own volition.
Disarmament proponents (do-goodnick doves that we are) point out that there is no way to use a nuclear weapon without harming civilians and decimating our already ravaged Earth. Additionally, although there has, for the most part, been peace between the major powers for the past 60 years, the advent of globalization means weapons by no means deserve all the credit for peace. Finally, just because nuclear weapons holders have behaved rationally for now is not a guarantee that they will do so indefinitely.
The only practical plan for the unconscionably oversized and outdated U.S. arsenal is to bridge deterrence and disarmament and couple decreasing our stockpile by the thousands with building a small generation of weapons designed for long-term storage and security. The Bulletin for Atomic Scientists pegs the U.S. as having about 5,500 warheads, compared to 14,000 weapons in Russia and mere hundreds in China, the U.K. or France. However, our parity with Russia and ability to ensure mutually assured destruction would not be impacted by drastic ordinance reduction.
Unfortunately, Obama pledged on his presidential campaign that he would not build any new nuclear weapons. While this is nice, in the theoretical anti-weapons sense, it isn’t a realistic policy. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last November “this is about modernizing and keeping safe a capability that everyone acknowledges we will have to have for some considerable period into the future.” Only by updating and decreasing our arsenal can the U.S. ensure long-term security and increase the legitimacy of our non-proliferation evangelization.
However, it is important to distinguish that the weapons I am advocating for would exist solely for second-strike (retaliatory) capabilities. The bunker busters or lower-yield warheads that the Bush administration pushed for are a surefire path toward using nuclear weapons offensively, which is morally reprehensible and in no situation acceptable. Obama must scrap his plan to maintain the option of using nukes in response to biological/chemical attacks or terrorism and make a firm commitment to nuclear weapons only being maintained to deter nuclear threats.
Disarmament is a laudable ideal that should be acted on whenever possible, yet it is not enough. Deterrence has helped prevent the nuclear holocaust many predicted, yet it is not enough. Conflict today is less driven by a desire for territorial conquest and regional hegemony but rather is increasingly fought along ideological divides, which means more non-rational actors may get their hands on weapons. Reducing stockpiles without building new weapons will mean never-ending maintenance costs and an arsenal that we aren’t 100 percent sure works. Building new weapons without reducing our arsenal will spark increased demand for weapons around the world.
The only part of this nuclear balancing act that the United States can control is its own arsenal. Countries like Iran and North Korea have long pointed to perceived U.S. hypocrisy when questioned about their own nuclear aspirations, and on this issue if nothing else they are right. If the U.S. wants to make a legitimate push toward non-proliferation and disarmament around the world the necessary first step is drastically reducing how many warheads we have.
By developing a small, secure and storable arsenal the legitimacy of America’s campaign to keep new countries out of the nuclear club will be multiplied exponentially, and that is as close as we’re likely to get to a nuclear free world any time soon.
Ben Dalgetty is a senior Poitics major. He can be reached at bdalgetty@oxy.edu.
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