Obama Likely to Stick With Nukes

 "President Obama is very assertive. But it's not clear how much [more] assertive he chooses to be," said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a policy think tank based in Washington that monitors U.S. nuclear policy on ethical grounds. 

In an analytical report prepared for FAS recently, Kristensen and his colleague, Robert Norris, warned that President Obama might fail to implement his agenda on nuclear disarmament due to lack of cooperation by the civil and military bureaucracy in Washington. 

"There is concern over whether Obama's goals can be realised within the enduring bureaucracies that have a stake in the status quo," Kristensen wrote in the FAS report. 

Both Kristensen and Norris think that a "radical break" is needed to set the United States on a new path capable of realising deep cuts in and the possible elimination of nuclear weapons. That break, they argue, must include abandonment of the concept of "counterforce", the ruling paradigm that focuses on eliminating an enemy's nuclear weapons, infrastructure and war-making abilities. 

Currently, the United States and Russia are the world's largest nuclear weapons states. They possess 93 percent of the total number of nuclear weapons in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a Swedish think tank that tracks weapon production and exports worldwide. 

In addition, China has 400 warheads, France 348, and Israel and Britain 200 each. India is believed to have more than 80 and Pakistan about 40 nuclear weapons. The newest member of the nuclear club, North Korea, has no more than 10 "small" nuclear weapons, according to the institute's estimates. 

Many critics see the United States as the most irresponsible member of the nuclear club, for not only failing in its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but also going to great lengths to derail the international discourse on nuclear disarmament in the past. 

The Ronald Reagan administration (1981-89), for example, looked the other way when Pakistan was developing its illegal nuclear programme in the 1980s. Similarly, the George W. Bush administration (2001- 2009) decided to make a nuclear trade deal with India that remains outside the fold of the NPT. 

The Obama administration has signed a new strategic arms treaty with Russia, but it allows the United States to keep at least 3,500 nuclear weapons in its arsenal even after 2020. That, as proponents of disarmament noted at the time, was a step in the right direction, but not enough. 

According to FAS researchers, the more general policy concepts are currently travelling through the various departments, offices and bureaucracies in Washington, and will then be translated into highly detailed and "carefully orchestrated strike plans that instruct the war fighter how and when to attack a specific target". 

The result, according to Kristensen and Norris, is "a fully articulated war plan". 

The FAS report points out that the implementation of Obama's Nuclear Posture Review is now taking place at various levels, but that remains out of public view. "It has potentially enormous implementations, depending on the outcome," the report says. 

Obama's agenda on disarmament has five key objectives, which include prevention of nuclear proliferation and terrorism; reduction of the role of nuclear weapons; maintenance of strategic deterrence; strengthening of regional alliances; and sustaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. 

To advance his goals, Obama should issue a Presidential Policy Directive that explains a new nuclear deterrence plan focused on destroying essential enemy infrastructure, Kristensen said.