The Great Debate

The Great Debate ing that America seeks nuclear zero, Obama Is Nuclear Zero is simply reaffirming that we will follow our the Best Option? treaty commitments: states that joined the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt) agreed “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to Yes: Scott D. Sagan nuclear disarmament.” And since Article 6 of America’s Constitution says that a treaty com- very time Barack Obama announces mitment is “the supreme Law of the Land,” at that he is in favor of a world free of a basic level, Obama is simply saying that he E nuclear weapons, the nuclear hawks will follow U.S. law. descend. Soon after his inauguration, for- The abolition aspiration is not, however, mer–Reagan administration Pentagon of- based on such legal niceties. Instead, it is ficial Frank Gaffney proclaimed that the inspired by two important insights about the president “stands to transform the ‘world’s global nuclear future. First, the most dan- only superpower’ into a nuclear impotent.” gerous nuclear threats to the United States After Obama promised in his 2009 Prague today and on the horizon are from terrorists speech that “the United States will take con- and potential new nuclear powers, not from crete steps toward a world without nuclear our traditional Cold War adversaries in Rus- weapons,” former–Secretary of Defense James sia and China. Second, the spread of nuclear Schlesinger declared that “the notion that weapons to new states, and indirectly to ter- we can abolish nuclear weapons reflects on rorist organizations, will be made less likely a combination of American utopianism and if the United States and other nuclear-armed American parochialism.” And when the presi- nations are seen to be working in good faith dent won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, in part toward disarmament. for his embrace of the disarmament vision, Nuclear weapons may have been a danger- Time Magazine even ran an essay entitled ous necessity to keep the Cold War cold. But “Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel.” scholars and policy makers who are nostalgic Obama is right to declare, loudly and often, for the brutal simplicity of that era’s nuclear that the United States seeks a world without deterrence do not understand how much the nuclear weapons, and the administration is world has changed. The choice we face is not right to be taking concrete steps now toward between a nuclear-free world or a return to that long-term goal. Indeed, by proclaim- bipolar Cold War deterrence; it is between creating a nuclear-weapons-free world or Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S. G. Professor of living in a world with many more nuclear- Political Science at Stanford University and co- weapons states. And if there are more nuclear director of Stanford’s Center for International Security nations, and more atomic weapons in global and Cooperation. arsenals, there will be more opportunities for 88 The National Interest The Great Debate terrorists to steal or casualties [would] be buy the bomb. in [the] region of 500 long-term affected if he threat of nu- dispersed in [a] busy T clear-armed ter- area (Inshalla).” A rorists is not new. In homegrown dirty- 1977, the Red Army bomb threat has also Faction in West Ger- emerged: in 2009, many attacked a U.S. James Cummings, a military base hop- neo-Nazi in Belfast, ing to steal the tac- Maine, was discov- tical nuclear weap- ered to have started ons there. The Aum collecting low-level Shinrikyo apocalyptic nuclear materials. cult in Japan sought recruits in the Russian The even-more-destructive terrorist-nucle- military in the 1990s to get access to loose ar-weapons danger is looming on the horizon. nukes and only settled on using sarin-gas Terrorists are not likely to be deterred by chemicals in the Tokyo subway when their threats of retaliation. Stopping them from nuclear efforts failed. Today’s threat is even purchasing a nuclear weapon, or stealing one, more alarming. It is well known that Osama or getting the materials to make their own is bin Laden has proclaimed that Islamic jihadis a much better strategy. If aspiring nuclear- have a duty to acquire and to use nuclear weapons states—such as Iran and Syria (and weapons against the West. And al-Qaeda is some suspect Burma)—get nuclear weapons known to have recruited senior Pakistani nu- in the future, the danger that terrorists will clear scientists in the past and may now have get their hands on one will clearly increase. “sleeper agents” in Pakistani laboratories to And if the United States and other nuclear- help in that effort. weapons nations are seen to be hypocritical, The easier-to-acquire radioactive dirty by not following our npt commitments and bomb with its concomitant threat to kill up to maintaining that we (but only we) are respon- one thousand people and create environmen- sible enough to have them, it will reduce the tal havoc is already a reality. In 2004, Dhi- likelihood of ensuring the broad international ren Barot, a veteran of jihadi campaigns in cooperation that is needed to reduce these Kashmir, was arrested in London. He admit- proliferation risks. ted to plotting attacks against the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank and fficials in the George W. Bush adminis- possessed detailed plans to acquire nuclear O tration believed that there was no link materials from ten thousand smoke detectors between U.S. arsenal size or military posture for a radiological device. In a report sent to and nonproliferation decisions made by non- al-Qaeda central, Barot wrote that “estimated nuclear-weapons states. The Obama admin- Sagan vs. Waltz September/October 2010 89 Obama is right to declare, loudly and often, that the United States seeks a world without nuclear weapons. istration’s new Nuclear Posture Review main- liferator will not be tolerated. Fortunately, in a tains that the connection is strong, even if it is nuclear-free world, the former nuclear-weap- often indirect and hard to measure: ons states would have far stronger mutual in- centives to punish and reverse any new state’s By demonstrating that we take seriously our npt decision to acquire atomic bombs. Ironically, obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament, we it is precisely because nuclear-weapons states strengthen our ability to mobilize broad inter- have such large arsenals today that they some- national support for the measures needed to re- times succumb to the temptation to accept inforce the non-proliferation regime and secure new proliferators. In a disarmed world, such nuclear materials worldwide. complacency would be more obviously im- prudent, thus encouraging the once-nuclear- There are now many signs that the Obama armed states to enforce nonproliferation. administration is correct in its assessment that Verification at zero (or at low numbers for progress in disarmament enables progress in that matter) is an obvious challenge. Even if nonproliferation. The April 2010 Nuclear better verification technology is created, there Security Summit brought forty-six countries will remain the problem of what to do if an to Washington where they reached agreement erstwhile nuclear nation is caught secretly on a number of concrete steps to better pro- preparing to rearm. A way around this is to tect nuclear materials from terrorists. And accept the fact that all former nuclear-weap- in stark contrast to the Bush-era 2005 npt ons states will retain the option of reversing Review Conference, which ended in failure, course. Ironically, this capability will be both the May 2010 review took place in a co- reassuring and deterring: reassuring because operative atmosphere and produced a final it enables states to begin taking the final steps document that called on all states to sign onto toward total nuclear disarmament even in improved safeguards for their reactors, and the absence of complete confidence that the encouraged governments not in compliance process will be successful; deterring because with their treaty commitments to change their each state will know that even if it can reverse ways. The successful efforts to get additional its final disarmament steps, so can the others. rounds of sanctions against Iran in the un In short, there will still be a latent form of Security Council can be credited, in part, to nuclear deterrence even in a nuclear-disarmed the new spirit of cooperation, including the world. progress on arms-control agreements between Finally, there is the question of ballistic- the United States and China, and the United missile defenses. During and immediately after States and Russia. the Cold War, many saw these systems as “de- stabilizing” because as long as a government’s evere challenges to global zero remain. It nuclear security was dependent on the ability S will be critical that all states have increased to retaliate with devastating force after an at- confidence that final disarmament agreements tack, if an adversary hitting first could use will be enforced and that any new nuclear pro- even limited defenses to reduce the effective- 90 The National Interest The Great Debate ness of second-strike retaliation, mutually as- No: Kenneth N. Waltz sured destruction no longer held. Managed mutual-missile-defense deployments in the future could, however, permit the final steps ....ar may not pay, as British of disarmament to take place with less concern ..economist Norman Angell about cheating in the immediate term and Wrepeatedly claimed, but the lesson could provide more confidence in the ability proved a hard one for states to learn. Even of governments to respond in a timely manner with the horrors of World War I fresh in their to successful rule breaking by another state.

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