Conflicting Blueprints

Sometimes it helps to frame choices about familiar subjects in different ways. By way of prologue – and to dust off the arguments in my book, Better Safe than Sorry (2009) – here’s another way to think about future arms control choices:

The global system created over many decades to prevent nuclear proliferation can be likened to a construction project. The construction is only as sturdy as the common resolve of the five nations with nuclear weapons that also enjoy permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. As the world’s strongest power, the United States has the most responsibility for building maintenance. If Washington walks away from this job, the construction site will become unsafe. But even if the United States does its job properly, Russia, China, France, and Great Britain still have to support the structure. When the P-5 works in concert against the perils of proliferation, the construction provides reliable shelter. When they place other national security and commercial interests ahead of proliferation concerns, the construction becomes wobbly.

The building’s load-bearing walls consist of agreements, rules, and norms designed to prevent proliferation. Treaties that set legally binding obligations constitute the steel beams that keep this structure erect…

Some construction on the first floor was only partly completed. One room for a treaty that would end nuclear tests for all time was built but never occupied… Other planned construction was never undertaken, especially a treaty banning the production of fissile material for weapons.

Constructing the first floor of this edifice required consensus, not only between the superpowers, but also between weapon possessors and abstainers. During the first nuclear age, the foundation remained strong. Even though the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers rose to absurd levels, new additions to the nuclear club were kept reasonably in check…

The second nuclear age began in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union and the surprise discovery in Iraq of an advanced bomb program… The structure built to prevent proliferation during the first nuclear age was not designed to deal with new members of the nuclear club or the threat of nuclear terrorism… At the same time, none of the P-5 acted like strong stakeholders during the second nuclear age…

The first nuclear age was an exercise in establishing norms against proliferation. The norms helped to apply leverage on states that were fence-sitters. The norms did not prevent rule breaking, but they did make it easier to isolate or sanction rule breakers. During the second nuclear age, these norms were weakened, and there was less discipline to reinforce them…

The inner circle of the George W. Bush administration held jaundiced views about the effectiveness of global nonproliferation norms and the utility of treaties. They wanted to build a second floor to address new proliferation challenges, using different tools. Rooms on the second floor would not require consensual building permits, because the second floor required the coercive tools that the first floor lacked…

Some of this construction worked reasonably well…Constructing a second floor of the global nonproliferation system was needed, and the Bush administration deserves much credit for these initiatives. The Bush administration’s design, however, had a fundamental flaw: It focused almost entirely on the second floor while leaving the first floor to its structural weaknesses. The administration focused on the second floor precisely because it fundamentally disagreed with previous builders over what constituted the first floor’s load-bearing walls….

Moreover, construction during the first nuclear age was built on the core principle that rules needed to apply to all… The entire first floor could never have been built had its builders chosen to construct one set of rules for responsible states and another for bad actors because the construction crew couldn’t agree on who belonged in which category…

The master builders of the global nonproliferation system considered these load-bearing walls to be the norms against using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, testing these devices, and producing the fissile material that made these weapons so lethal. Some – but not all – of these norms are embedded in treaties. The architects of the first floor believed that the structural integrity of their building required the rebar provided by treaties – especially the treaty banning nuclear tests…

The Bush administration used fundamentally different building principles for the second story. It postulated a new guiding principle for proliferation: that the fundamental problem was not related to the Bomb, but to the bomb holder. The character of the state mattered most… The Bush administration also significantly qualified a norms-based approach to proliferation: Rules and norms were good, except where norms constrained U.S. freedom of action or the actions of U.S. friends and allies…

No reputable construction company would build atop a shaky foundation without strengthening its load-bearing walls.

This analysis still holds, at least in my view. Fundamental disagreements continue to exist on Capitol Hill over the value of treaties and strategic modernization programs. Democrats and Republicans have two sets of blueprints for reducing nuclear dangers, with insufficient overlap. Democrats now feel comfortable in some rooms on the second floor, such as the one housing the proliferation security initiative, but the structure’s foundation will remain shaky as long as Republicans in the Senate oppose new strategic arms reduction treaties and the CTBT.

The old instruments of suasion to bring Republicans on board – hugely expensive commitments to new projects at the weapon labs and strategic modernization programs – can no longer be replicated, given their track record of uncontrolled cost growth, their Cold War legacy, and competing demands for defense dollars. Republican hawks still think they can hold treaty ratification hostage to multiple big ticket items – as was the case for New START — but they are dwelling in the past. The Obama administration wasn’t able to deliver on its promises and its successors will also be hard-pressed to find the sums needed to recapitalize the Triad, the labs, and the stockpile. Nuclear hawks now have to deal with deficit hawks as well as arms controllers.

The era of linkage between multiple, expensive strategic modernization projects and ambitious treaties is over. U.S. nuclear forces will have to do less with less, and besides, treaties are no longer ambitious. Their modest offspring aren’t worth exorbitant price tags.

So what are the options? Option I is reduced ambitions for both strategic modernization programs and treaties, using a more modest form of linkage to maintain a functional domestic consensus in both domains. Option II is no new treaties anytime soon and continued shrinkage of the labs and nuclear force structure. Option II will remain more likely, at least until the Republican Party regains its balance. Arms controllers won’t like the absence of treaties, but they will be able to accommodate themselves to Option II more easily than staunch defenders of nuclear deterrence.