All of the significant gains in the field of arms control were the result of stubborn optimism mixed with idealism. Pessimists thought nuclear arms control was a fool’s errand, bound to end very badly, like naval arms control in the 1920s and 1930s. It was preposterous to think that the superpowers could agree to refrain from testing their most powerful weapons, that nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” could agree on a global nonproliferation compact, and that treaties to ban the possession of chemical and biological weapons would have practical effect. It was naïve to think that two ideological and geopolitical foes could agree to limit and then reduce their nuclear arsenals, and even crazier to believe that they would forego national defenses against ocean-spanning missile attacks. Only fools (and not many of them) would have predicted that nuclear weapons would not be used on battlefields after 1945.
Well, who was right? The cynics, pessimists and realists — or the optimists?
Cynics are typically not wired to achieve anything out of the ordinary: they fend off the world around them as best they can. Realists excel at shoring up the status quo – old or new. This can come in handy when the world is changing, but it doesn’t help to change the world. Dreamers have great powers of imagination, but not implementation. Dreamers who are also well grounded become change agents. Optimists aren’t as imaginative as dreamers, but with the right skills, they can shift the status quo.
Prophetic voices warn of impending doom. When the sky doesn’t fall, they lose their audience. Dreamers help identify and popularize positive end-states. Optimists build the steps. A President rarely has the time or space to be a dreamer. But a President has to be an optimist for arms control and disarmament to succeed. The President has to be surrounded with enough optimists to help realists accomplish something extraordinary, which will then become the new normal. If a President is surrounded by realists, cynics and pessimists, he (and sooner or later, she) won’t accomplish much. Even then, uncommon success requires the right conditions for realists, cynics and pessimists to be proven wrong. Opportunities can present themselves and pass quickly. When they arrive, the President has to have sufficient standing to keep pessimists and cynics at bay.
The role of ideologues, whether on the Left or Right, is to resist realism and pragmatism. Ideologues don’t fit in Democratic administrations, which are typically forced by circumstances to triangulate between the hard Left and the Republican Right. Ever since the Reagan administration, ideologues have been handed responsible positions – especially portfolios dealing with arms control.
Republican administrations did much of the heavy lifting for the new enterprise of arms control. Gerard Smith, Butch Fisher, and William Foster were pragmatists as well as optimists who worked for realists. The friction between pragmatists and ideologues in the Reagan administration helped produce uncommon success stories, because the arbiter of these battles was a dreamer.
Barack Obama may also be a dreamer. But a dreamer without keen political instincts and skilled operators around him risks becoming a victim of circumstances, rather than a change agent. President Obama’s legacy on nuclear issues will rest not on his lofty rhetoric, but on whether he can pull off a deal that suspends and down-sizes Iran’s nuclear capabilities.