U.S. President Barack Obama’s
commitment to preventing and rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons
was clear from the first days of his administration, when he pledged in
Prague in April 2009 “to seek the peace and security of a world without
nuclear weapons.” The historic vow shattered precedent, seized international attention and helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize later that year.
Yet as he prepares to leave office seven years later, it appears that
with the exception of a fledgling nuclear deal with Iran, Obama will
leave an arms control legacy that is arguably little better than that of
his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
Indeed, in many ways, Obama’s presidency has served as an object lesson in the limits of a U.S. president’s ability to shape a global nuclear order amid competing tugs from foreign competitors and allies, domestic politics and bureaucratic factions. In the past several years, forces abroad—Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea—and at home—congressional Republicans, elements in the Defense and Energy Departments—have all challenged Obama’s vision to the point where his successor is now likely to be pressured to give nuclear weapons a renewed role in U.S. national security policy.
Obama’s Prague speech was born of both strategic and tactical considerations. Strategically, 9/11 and a perception of U.S. conventional dominance over global rivals had generated a strain of thinking that saw the elimination of nuclear weapons as not only a global good, but a means of bolstering U.S. national security. Nuclear weapons, the argument went, gave rogue states like Iran and North Korea, weaker conventional powers like Russia and China, and terrorists a means of leveling the playing the field with mighty U.S. conventional forces.
Those new power dynamics had led a group of four leading Cold Warriors—former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—to sound the call for the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Obama first made this cause his own during the 2008 presidential campaign.
But the Prague speech had a more practical and tactical aspect, as well. Splits between the European Union and the U.S. in particular and the Bush administration and other important global actors more generally had prevented Washington from winning support for imposing punishing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. Left essentially unchecked, Iran was proceeding with enriching enough uranium to provide the essential fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Placing efforts to restrict Iranian nuclear developments within a more appealing global vision for the elimination of all nuclear weapons helped Obama win European support for sanctions that pushed Iran into serious negotiations in 2012. In the long term, the success of the nuclear deal is likely to depend on whether Obama’s implicit bet pays off: That Iran will change sufficiently in the next decade that by the time many of the deal’s strictures expire, Tehran won’t feel compelled to race for a bomb.
In an attempt to slow an escalating arms race between India and Pakistan, he pushed to move forward on two international treaties that had been negotiated by the Clinton administration but had met opposition either at home or abroad. The first was the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), banning all nuclear weapons tests and providing for verification measures to determine if such tests had occurred. In 1999, the Senate had defeated legislation ratifying it. The second was a treaty prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; Pakistan had become the major obstacle to beginning negotiations.
But today, neither the Senate nor Pakistan has budged in their opposition to the pacts. In fact, during Obama’s time in office, North Korea, which has not ratified the CTBT, has conducted three nuclear tests, following its first one in 2006. And Pakistan and India have increased their fissile material production.
One of Obama’s major policy innovations, presaged by his commitment in the Prague speech to launch an international effort to secure all fissile materials in four years, was a series of Nuclear Security Summits. At these meetings, he has brought together around 50 world leaders every two years to make further progress on efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, which the Bush administration either began or sharply boosted after 9/11. The summits have succeeded in bringing high-level focus to the issue; in advancing the enactment of some important nuclear security treaties; and in clearing some countries and facilities of dangerous materials in civilian hands.
Yet with the last such summit set for this spring, Obama will leave behind a nuclear security regime that still has far too many holes. He failed to enact stronger measures to prevent sabotage of nuclear facilities, including cyberattacks. He also failed to provide sufficient security over the civil sector’s large volumes of highly enriched uranium, plutonium and radioactive sources useful for “dirty bombs,” as well as fissile materials under military supervision.
What’s standing in Obama’s way? A tendency for other countries—especially Russia, the world’s largest possessor of nuclear materials—to discount the danger of nuclear terrorism and/or resent U.S. attempts to lead on the issue. After Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, Moscow bowed out of a longstanding and highly successful bilateral nuclear security effort with the U.S. and has refused to attend this year’s Nuclear Security Summit.
Putin’s recalcitrance has tarnished another one of Obama’s achievements: the negotiation and 2010 approval of the new START treaty, which locked in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals at the lowest levels in decades, after steep but unpublicized cuts in both country’s arsenals during the Bush administration. Touted as a moment to “reset” relations, the deal was supposed to be the first in a series of pacts that aimed to drive U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles toward zero.
Yet Russia, increasingly worried about U.S conventional and missile defense capabilities, had little interest in further nuclear cuts alone. In 2013 Moscow rebuffed an Obama initiative for a further one-third cut in arsenals, even before the standoff over Ukraine and allegations that Moscow violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had soured the prospects for fresh talks.
To win Senate approval of the new START treaty, moreover, Obama had to swallow a poison pill: the promise of major investments in U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems. With China and Russia modernizing their nuclear and conventional weapons and eroding American military dominance, Washington has been pressed to upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal. That includes gravity bombs, air-launched cruise missiles and strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from submarines and silos—all at an estimated cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
In his Prague speech, Obama acknowledged that his goal of a world without nuclear weapons “will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime.” But now the question for Obama’s successor is not how much more to cut America’s nuclear arsenal. Instead, it’s exactly how far he or she should go in building new nuclear weapons or upgrading old ones.
Miles Pomper is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, D.C.
Indeed, in many ways, Obama’s presidency has served as an object lesson in the limits of a U.S. president’s ability to shape a global nuclear order amid competing tugs from foreign competitors and allies, domestic politics and bureaucratic factions. In the past several years, forces abroad—Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea—and at home—congressional Republicans, elements in the Defense and Energy Departments—have all challenged Obama’s vision to the point where his successor is now likely to be pressured to give nuclear weapons a renewed role in U.S. national security policy.
Obama’s Prague speech was born of both strategic and tactical considerations. Strategically, 9/11 and a perception of U.S. conventional dominance over global rivals had generated a strain of thinking that saw the elimination of nuclear weapons as not only a global good, but a means of bolstering U.S. national security. Nuclear weapons, the argument went, gave rogue states like Iran and North Korea, weaker conventional powers like Russia and China, and terrorists a means of leveling the playing the field with mighty U.S. conventional forces.
Those new power dynamics had led a group of four leading Cold Warriors—former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—to sound the call for the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Obama first made this cause his own during the 2008 presidential campaign.
But the Prague speech had a more practical and tactical aspect, as well. Splits between the European Union and the U.S. in particular and the Bush administration and other important global actors more generally had prevented Washington from winning support for imposing punishing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. Left essentially unchecked, Iran was proceeding with enriching enough uranium to provide the essential fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Placing efforts to restrict Iranian nuclear developments within a more appealing global vision for the elimination of all nuclear weapons helped Obama win European support for sanctions that pushed Iran into serious negotiations in 2012. In the long term, the success of the nuclear deal is likely to depend on whether Obama’s implicit bet pays off: That Iran will change sufficiently in the next decade that by the time many of the deal’s strictures expire, Tehran won’t feel compelled to race for a bomb.
Obama’s presidency has served as an object lesson in the limits of a U.S. president’s ability to shape a global nuclear order.Still, the Prague speech was about more than Iran. Obama also sought to use it to advance other nuclear nonproliferation and arms control goals.
In an attempt to slow an escalating arms race between India and Pakistan, he pushed to move forward on two international treaties that had been negotiated by the Clinton administration but had met opposition either at home or abroad. The first was the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), banning all nuclear weapons tests and providing for verification measures to determine if such tests had occurred. In 1999, the Senate had defeated legislation ratifying it. The second was a treaty prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; Pakistan had become the major obstacle to beginning negotiations.
But today, neither the Senate nor Pakistan has budged in their opposition to the pacts. In fact, during Obama’s time in office, North Korea, which has not ratified the CTBT, has conducted three nuclear tests, following its first one in 2006. And Pakistan and India have increased their fissile material production.
One of Obama’s major policy innovations, presaged by his commitment in the Prague speech to launch an international effort to secure all fissile materials in four years, was a series of Nuclear Security Summits. At these meetings, he has brought together around 50 world leaders every two years to make further progress on efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, which the Bush administration either began or sharply boosted after 9/11. The summits have succeeded in bringing high-level focus to the issue; in advancing the enactment of some important nuclear security treaties; and in clearing some countries and facilities of dangerous materials in civilian hands.
Yet with the last such summit set for this spring, Obama will leave behind a nuclear security regime that still has far too many holes. He failed to enact stronger measures to prevent sabotage of nuclear facilities, including cyberattacks. He also failed to provide sufficient security over the civil sector’s large volumes of highly enriched uranium, plutonium and radioactive sources useful for “dirty bombs,” as well as fissile materials under military supervision.
What’s standing in Obama’s way? A tendency for other countries—especially Russia, the world’s largest possessor of nuclear materials—to discount the danger of nuclear terrorism and/or resent U.S. attempts to lead on the issue. After Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, Moscow bowed out of a longstanding and highly successful bilateral nuclear security effort with the U.S. and has refused to attend this year’s Nuclear Security Summit.
Putin’s recalcitrance has tarnished another one of Obama’s achievements: the negotiation and 2010 approval of the new START treaty, which locked in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals at the lowest levels in decades, after steep but unpublicized cuts in both country’s arsenals during the Bush administration. Touted as a moment to “reset” relations, the deal was supposed to be the first in a series of pacts that aimed to drive U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles toward zero.
Yet Russia, increasingly worried about U.S conventional and missile defense capabilities, had little interest in further nuclear cuts alone. In 2013 Moscow rebuffed an Obama initiative for a further one-third cut in arsenals, even before the standoff over Ukraine and allegations that Moscow violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had soured the prospects for fresh talks.
To win Senate approval of the new START treaty, moreover, Obama had to swallow a poison pill: the promise of major investments in U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems. With China and Russia modernizing their nuclear and conventional weapons and eroding American military dominance, Washington has been pressed to upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal. That includes gravity bombs, air-launched cruise missiles and strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from submarines and silos—all at an estimated cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
In his Prague speech, Obama acknowledged that his goal of a world without nuclear weapons “will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime.” But now the question for Obama’s successor is not how much more to cut America’s nuclear arsenal. Instead, it’s exactly how far he or she should go in building new nuclear weapons or upgrading old ones.
Miles Pomper is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, D.C.
