ArmsControlWonk.com

How’s this for irony: the bureaucratic home of nuclear weapons policy at DOD is SO/LIC&IC, short for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities.

Kidding aside, this actually says a lot about the diminishing bureaucratic footprint of nuclear weapons policy. During the 1993-1994 NPR, for example, the career nuclear weapons bureaucracy, civilian and military, was an independent force to be reckoned with, as Janne Nolan documented in her definitive account of that NPR, Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War.

And it surely is still a force, but just how much is open to debate. The political and policy environment of 2009-2010 will probably be much different than it was in 1994-1995. Back then, the military was basically united in its opposition to significant changes in nuclear weapons policy and its disdain for President Clinton, and the civilian nuclear weapons bureaucracy still had a great deal of clout within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, where an ascendant Republican majority was eager to harass the Clinton administration. None of these conditions are likely to be replicated any time soon, so I’m inclined to believe that the bureaucracy is not the force it once was.

But I wouldn’t want to underestimate it either. There is growing political interest in revisiting U.S. nuclear weapons policy — Congress has mandated the next administration to complete a formal Nuclear Posture Review by early 2010, U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have emphasized the importance of revisiting U.S. nuclear weapons strategy, and there’s that Shultz/Perry/Kissinger/Nunn effort — but talk is cheap. Any serious effort to change the posture will still require presidential commitment and sustained attention from the president’s senior political appointees.

The trouble is, it is tempting for a busy administration to relegate nuclear weapons policy to the category of “tending the garden,” and not “putting out fires.” And the next U.S. administration will sure inherit plenty of fires: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and growing regional clout, a broken U.S.-Russia relationship, and an incoherent missile defense policy run by a troubled agency (to name but a few). And guess who the lead or deputy firefighter is for pretty much all these issues? Yup — it’s the ASD SO/LIC&IC.

That’s an awful lot of fires for one person to battle. Will this individual realistically have the time and energy to shepherd an NPR that goes beyond a low common denominator? If not, does the DAS for Strategic Capabilities have enough clout to pick up the slack? Would it help if that position was spun off into its own office headed by an assistant secretary?

These are tough questions to answer in the abstract, but the next administration must wrestle with them if it is serious about changing U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

Comment [3]

Greetings Arms Control Wonk readers. I am yet another pasty, dark-haired contributor. I normally wear glasses too, but Jeffrey asked for a picture sans spectacles so that you could better tell us apart. I said, “Dude, your readers can look at satellite photos and tell the difference between a DF-5 and a DF-5A. Shouldn’t they be able to tell us three apart?” But Jeffrey insisted.

Anyway, check out the Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett op-ed in today’s NY Times. I whole-heartedly agree with their assessment that the United States must be willing to address Iran’s security concerns if we are to expect Iran to address ours.

But I worry that the sort of Grand Bargain that Flynt and Hillary advocate simply asks too much of both Washington and Tehran. They are right that “[t]he idea of “engaging” Iran diplomatically is becoming less politically radioactive than it was early in the Bush years,” but the chances of the lame duck Bush administration cutting a comprehensive deal with Iran in the next 12 months are awfully slim.

And the Democrats? Flynt and Hillary say that:

Even Democrats who have talked about “engagement” have yet to spell out what it would take to engage Iran successfully. Most hide behind a vague incrementalism, epitomized in a recent statement by Hillary Clinton’s top national security adviser extolling the candidate’s willingness to consider “carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns.”

I share Flynt and Hillary’s frustration with the Democrats’ general lack of clarity on Iran policy (particularly in the sanctions realm, where Congress has run amok with the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act). But I think what Lee Feinstein (author of the above quote) said here is quite appropriate, and ahem, carefully calibrated. What more could he say without committing political suicide?

Indeed, I fear that the Democrats may be in an even worse position than the Bush administration when it comes to cutting a serious deal with Iran. My sense is that the party’s policy elders firmly believe that the United States must contain and engage Iran. But frankly, I can’t imagine a Democratic president cutting a comprehensive deal with Iran so long as Ahmadinejad is president. The U.S. domestic politics are simply too messy. I wish I could say it wasn’t so, but there you have it.

At any rate, what worries me most about the “Grand Bargain” strategy is that it would transform a dynamic in which Iran is pitted against the UN Security Council and its Arab neighbors to one where it is Iran versus the United States. That would be a diplomatic battle fought on Iran’s terms, not ours.

My view is that we ought to negotiate with the Iranians on discrete issues such as the fuel cycle program, and then see where the individual negotiations take us. (Joe Cirincione and I argued this in our February 2007 report “Contain and Engage: A New Strategy for Resolving the Nuclear Crisis with Iran.”)

Comment [7]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more or less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The Bush Administration is expert at distorting language for their purposes, particulary on issues of arms control.

This recurring feature will try to map the games these characters play with language.

Take this quote from Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker in his December 17 keynote address to the American Foreign Policy Council (In theory, C-SPAN has the video, but I can’t make it work):

So it can be said that by 2001, the ABM Treaty was not the cornerstone of strategic arms control, but rather a principal obstacle to progress in arms control.

The argument? Because, after the ABM Treaty withdrawal, Washington and Moscow signed the Moscow Treaty, which provided for “the deepest reduction ever mandated by a strategic arms control treaty.”

What an asshole.

Apart from pointing out that correlation is not causality (is there any evidence that Russia was less likely to sign the Moscow Treaty with the ABM Treaty in place?):

• The reductions outlined in the Moscow Treaty were equivalent to those anticipated under START III, and

• The Moscow Treaty places no restriction on force composition. Unlike START II and III, the Moscw Treaty permits the continued deployment ICBMs with multiple independently targeted warheads—forces that will be indefinitely maintened on relatively high rates of alert as a countermeasure to U.S. missile defense deployments.

(John Steinbruner and I heaped scorn on the Moscow Treaty in Daedalus earning us the uncertain honor of a footnote in Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony and Survival.)

Of course, restrictions on MIRVs, missile defenses and the like testify to the foolishness of nuclear warfighting and the inevitability of mutual vulnerability—definitely an obstacle to the forces outlined in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and the kind of “arms control” practiced by the Bush Administration.

In other words, Rademaker is saying that arms control was an obstacle to arms control.

Comment