global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESit would well serve the near-term national security interests ofboth the possessor countries and the non-nuclear countries ofthe world. Third, the basic idea of de-alerting – decreasing theoperational readiness of nuclear weapons – enjoys almost universalsupport among the nations of the world and it derivesstrong political and legal standing from the NPT. And fourth,it builds upon a set of historical antecedents in the form ofconfidence-building measures designed reduce the risk of theuse of nuclear weapons stemming from misunderstanding,miscalculation, and breakdown of command and control.An alternative pathway toward deep reductions and <strong>global</strong><strong>zero</strong>. De-alerting offers an alternative to the other two mainpaths to this goal. Of the main paths, one has stalled completelyand the other has failed to garner the support of the majorityof the world’s leading countries.The traditional main path is the step-by-step process that fordecades has dominated the arms control agenda of the P-5 nuclearcountries, their allies, and most of the rest of the internationalcommunity. The key steps are ending the productionof fissile materials (the Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty), fullyratifying and implementing a treaty banning nuclear chain reactionsin weapons testing (the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty),and further shrinking the world-wide nuclear weaponsstockpile through negotiated and unilateral reductions of U.S.and Russian weapons (the next follow-on treaty to the 2010New START agreement).All of these steps have ground to a halt. FMCT, CTBT, andNew START follow-on negotiations are paralyzed by internationaland domestic politics between and within the nuclearweapons countries.In the critical arena of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductionsthere are no near-term prospects for progress. Their stockpilesare leveling off, after 30 years of steady decreases broughtthem down from a peak of 70,000 weapons in the mid-1980sto 16,000 weapons today. There is also no realistic prospect todayof bringing the other nuclear weapons countries to the tableto negotiate cuts, especially given the impasse between thenuclear superpowers who possess the vast bulk of the <strong>global</strong>stockpile. On the contrary, all nuclear weapons countries areinvesting heavily, or planning to do so, in the long-term modernizationof their nuclear arsenals.A litany of obstacles can be recited. The bottom lines are thatPresident Putin has rebuffed President Obama’s overtures toresume strategic arms negotiations. Russia is also alleged tohave violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty(INF), putting it in jeopardy of collapsing. The animus betweenRussia and the West over Ukraine has also created a domesticpolitical climate that does not favor further unilateralor bilateral reductions by either side. Even if an arms reductionagreement could be negotiated, the U.S. Senate would resistratifying it for domestic political as well as strategic reasons.This traditional approach is deeply flawed in any case. It hasprofound structural deficiencies beginning with its completeneglect of tactical nuclear weapons (short-range, below 500kilometers in range) even though these weapons are the mostuseable and dangerous in many respects. The Russia stockpileof these weapons is large. Strategic reserve weapons, whoseproportion of the overall strategic stockpiles is increasing, geta free pass as well. The U.S. stockpile of these weapons is large.Furthermore, no other possessor countries besides Russia andthe United States participate at all in negotiations to reduce eitherstrategic or tactical weapons. The rest get a free pass, eventhough the risks of nuclear weapons use appear to be greatestin South and Northeast Asia, home of four nuclear weaponscountries that steer clear of any multilateral regulation fora.In short, this path leads down a blind alley at the present time,and in any case it offers diminishing returns. It needs to befundamentally restructured to become comprehensive andinclusive, putting tactical weapons and strategic reserve weaponsin the negotiating basket and bringing all nuclear weaponscountries to the table to join the United States and Russia. Thisideal is unfortunately a dead letter for the foreseeable future.The other major pathway to arms reductions is less direct:delegitimize nuclear weapons. This approach emphasizes thedisastrous humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weaponseven on a small scale, the irreducible and growing risksof such use in an era of proliferation, and the utter lack of national,institutional, and organizational capacity to provide effectiverelief to victims in the event of their use. This approachseeks to reinforce the taboo against their use or possession by38
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESpromoting no-first-use, sole-purpose (accepting that as longas they exist their sole purpose is to deter their use by others),and other commitments that would further circumscribe therole of nuclear weapons in national security strategy.The approach has made little headway. Some baby steps havebeen taken by the majority of the non-nuclear countriesthrough their participation in the humanitarian consequencesconferences held in recent years in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna,but the nuclear weapons countries have balked at participationand view this approach with jaundiced eyes. That the approachfalls short is further evidenced by President Obama’s rejectionof sole-purpose and no-first use commitments. The latter getsscant traction outside of China and India. As discussed earlier,the nuclear doctrines of most countries allow considerableleeway for nuclear weapons to be used against a wide range ofnon-nuclear threats including chemical, biological, and conventionalthreats.De-alerting offers a promising third pathway. It works by consigningwarheads and bombs to ever-deeper storage. The longerit takes to retrieve and return them to high alert status,the more the military war planners may discount their futurevalue and offer them up for elimination. Thus, for example, thelarge stockpile of reserve Minuteman missile warheads in storagein New Mexico contribute almost nothing to the nuclearwar plan. In theory they could be transported to mid-westernmissile bases during a crisis and uploaded to increase thepayload of each missile from one warhead to three warheads.But this uploading would take years to complete, and so thewar planners have largely written them off. These warheadsare ripe for scrapping, although a different argument can bemade for retaining them: they provide a reserve hedge of replacementwarheads in the event that systemic technical flawsin the deployed warheads are discovered.In short, de-alerting tends to reinforce the prevailing view ofthe U.S. military, and some other militaries around the world,that nuclear weapons have little or no military utility.In the U.S. context, another virtue of de-alerting is that thepresident possesses full authority to order its implementation.As commander in chief, he has the constitutional power tochange the operational disposition of his forces, conventionaland nuclear, without Congressional approval. PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush exercised this power when he stood downthousands of nuclear weapons – both strategic and tactical –over the course of a few days in 1991. These are additional virtues.De-alerting can be carried out almost overnight and forall types of weapons.In summary, de-alerting offers a relatively fast and clear pathtoward deep reductions in the number of operationally deployedwarheads. By de-alerting, nations can hasten the transferof weapons from active to reserve to inactive status. Whilede-alerting does not oblige nations to remove weapons fromservice permanently, it accelerates their retirement and dismantlement.VIII. DE-ALERTING AND NATIONAL SECURITYINTERESTS OF OTHER KEY NATIONSA. RUSSIAThe main threats facing Russia today arguably are proliferationand nuclear terrorism. The latter often originates in the Caucasuswhere indigenous and foreign “insurgents” regularly plotand execute deadly terrorist assaults on Moscow and otherfar-flung targets in Russia. Taliban and other extremist movementsin Afghanistan and elsewhere represent external terroristthreats.Russia’s large nuclear arsenal neither deters such assaults norprovides any tools for preventing or responding to them. Indeed,Russia’s nuclear stockpile of weapons and bomb-gradematerials is itself at risk of terrorist theft and use against Russia.This danger inspired Russia and the United States to cooperateclosely to enhance the security of the Russian stockpilefrom the early 1990s until recently. Over the past twodecades, the United States contributed approximately $1 billionper year toward this effort to prevent “loose nukes” fromfalling into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations. Approximately20 attempts at smuggling bomb-grade uranium havebeen foiled; the total quantity of material seized was nearlyenough for one Hiroshima-class bomb. If this seized materialrepresents about 10 percent of the total material that hasleaked onto the black market, then about seven bombs’ worth39
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