Global Security Newswire

CHICAGO -- U.S. President Barack Obama is converting his campaign promises on nuclear nonproliferation into policy and is beginning to move to meet those pledges, one nonproliferation expert said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 10).

The new administration has already indicated that its next budget would include no funding for development of a new nuclear weapon and that it intends to cut spending on missile defense activities, said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.

Obama has also shown a willingness to engage with known nuclear-weapon states such as Russia and North Korea and with one nation still suspected in Washington of having nuclear weapons aspirations -- Iran.

“Policy matters, particularly our policy. What we do makes a real difference in the world,” Cirincione said. “I think this administration gets it like no administration in recent memory has gotten it.”

Cirincione acknowledged that he had served as a nonproliferation adviser to the Obama campaign. He said, though, that the then-candidate and his opponent in the presidential election, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) both agreed on the need for a revised nuclear policy.

McCain’s platform was “one of the most progressive planks in his national security program,” encompassing deep reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal and support for a ban on production of fissile material for weapons, among other measures. Obama, however, offered a more expansive approach, Cirincione said.

“He came into office with the most comprehensive, integrated, detailed nuclear policy of any candidate ever to assume the presidency,” he said during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Among the key points of the platform were the prevention of nuclear terrorism; negotiation of significant cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia; taking all U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger status, which enables them to be fired within 15 minutes; ratification of the treaty banning all nuclear test blasts; and a halt to development and production of new nuclear weapons.

“Finally, he agreed to campaign toward the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Cirincione said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in testimony Jan. 13 on Capitol Hill, asserted the Obama campaign’s stances as administration policy, Cirincione said.

Clinton identified WMD terrorism as the major threat facing the United States, rather than the Bush administration’s “axis of evil” of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, Cirincione said. The solution to this threat is leading international efforts to continue the already significant reduction of nuclear stockpiles in order to lessen the potential for diversion of those weapons, according to the administration.

Clinton also addressed a broader agenda that would be familiar to followers of the Obama campaign’s security proposals, Cirincione said: “This represents a dramatic change in U.S. national security policy.”

Clinton on Sunday made it clear that the administration would hold its predecessor responsible to some degree for the proliferation situation today. The Bush administration decision to scrap the 1994 Agreed Framework -- the deal set by Clinton’s husband during his term as president in an effort to shutter North Korea’s nuclear weapons operations -- led Pyongyang to become a greater nuclear threat, she said during a trip to Alaska.

“The Agreed Framework was torn up on the basis of the concerns about the highly enriched uranium program," Clinton said, according to the Washington Post. "There is no debate that, once the Agreed Framework was torn up, the North Koreans began to reprocess plutonium with a vengeance because all bets were off. The result is they now have nuclear weapons, which they did not have before."

The administration continues to declare its readiness to conduct direct nuclear diplomacy with North Korea and Iran, with Obama notably pledging to meet an “unclenched fist” in the Muslim world with the hand of friendship. Iranian officials have responded to Obama’s statement, which could eventually open the door for talks on the nuclear standoff.

Rhetoric is being turned into practice at the White House, Cirincione said.

Obama has met the congressional demand to establish the position of a “czar” to lead WMD terrorism defense and nonproliferation activities. Former U.S. arms control official Gary Samore, now a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, is expected to lead the office of up to 10 staffers (see GSN, Jan. 29).

Other nonproliferation policy experts are also being placed in relevant positions at the State Department and other agencies, Cirincione said.

Early talks with Moscow might already be under way on further reductions to the two nations’ nuclear arsenals. The two nations together are believed to hold more than 24,000 nuclear weapons and are nearing the expiration in December of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which set limits on deployment of warheads and nuclear delivery vehicles.

There are reports that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- one of the four “Four Horsemen of the Nonapocalypse,” U.S. statesmen who have campaigned for global nuclear disarmament in recent years -- met with Russian officials in recent weeks. Undersecretary of State William Burns also addressed potential talks during a trip last week to Moscow.

“They received a favorable response so far from the Russians. The thaw is under way,” Cirincione said (see related GSN story, today).

A memorandum leaked in recent days indicates that the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration received word from the Management and Budget Office that the White House does not intend to request budget funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program (see related GSN story, today). Congress in the last two years zeroed funding for the Bush administration program to develop a safer, more reliable weapon. Critics of the new weapon have said a new warhead would send the wrong message if the United States intends to lead global nonproliferation efforts.

Missile defense funding is likely to be cut from $10 billion to $8 billion in the next budget year, according to Capitol Hill staffers. “That’s not enough in my book but it’s a good start,” Cirincione said.

“Basically the rush to deploy an ineffective technology against a nonexistent threat is over,” he said. “It’s now a go-slow approach. … Let’s look at whether this is operationally effective, let’s look if there’s a need for this.”

Responded Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner: “Since the 2010 budget submission hasn't been completed and sent to Congress I have no inkling about the proposed budget for missile defense. Regarding the threat, the headlines speak for themselves: Iran says it has launched a satellite and North Korea is apparently making preparations to launch a long-range missile” (see GSN, Feb. 3 and Feb. 11).

Some nonproliferation steps remain to be started, Cirincione said.

There is no plan yet for changing the status of the estimated 1,500 U.S. nuclear weapons that are on hair-trigger alert. That might follow preparation of the next nuclear posture review to be conducted this year, he said.

Similarly, there is no apparent activity regarding ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, according to Cirincione.

Obama has also no offered “no real word” on a global nuclear disarmament campaign, he said: It is “a little disturbing that the rhetoric the president-elect demonstrated … has not been replicated in office.”

Nonetheless, it is clear that Obama is focused on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation, he said.

“I have a great deal of optimism for our chances to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear policy, make the world a safer and better place,” Cirincione said.