Countdown to NPR
The Washington wonk-natives are throbbing in anticipation of the release (expected daily! Hourly!) or at least additional leaks about the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review. Ever since a White House-sourced New York Times story, the pre-game tension has been mounting. But that was more than a week ago, an eternity here inside the Beltway.
But the likelihood is that the NPR, maybe even more than the recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review, will be a wet noodle. The point of balance where the White House’s nuclear abolitionist sentiments meet the Pentagon’s practical assessment of strategic reality is predictable: it would be shocking if there were truly deep cuts below the 1500-warhead level forecast for the Geneva arms control talks with the Russians. And the media yammering about adjustments to the prospects of a “no first use” doctrine — a secondary issue and a policy that, even if embraced by the White House, could be reversed in the future — suggests an attempt to create a story where there isn’t much else to talk about.
The larger story about the review, alas, is that, rather than looking at the very different and certainly more dangerous nuclear future in view, the administration is looking in the rearview mirror, looking at unresolved Cold-War business. A truly useful nuclear posture review would:
- Consider the role of nuclear weapons in preserving the U.S. position as the guarantor of the liberal, international system. At what point will nuclear reductions become a part of the growing narrative of American decline?
- Anticipate the coming multipolar nuclear balance. The Cold-War, bipolar balance of terror is giving way a world where many more states — and, possibly, “non-state actors” — possess nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles; the bar to great-power status is being lowered and the relative size of the U.S. arsenal is less intimidating. We should think this through before taking decisions.
- Take a hard-headed look at the conventional balance. American conventional supremacy has been taken for granted since the collapse of the Soviet empire, to the point where “prevailing” in current irregular conflicts has become the first-order priority for the Pentagon. While it would be folly to give up on the wars we’re already fighting solely to deter future conflicts, there have been many past cases in which U.S. nuclear strength made up for conventional weaknesses.
To conclude with a bit of shameless commerce: these and other issues will be discussed at length in a forthcoming Center for Defense Studies monograph: Toward a New “New Look”: U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Forces for the Third Atomic Age, by yours truly and my friend and former colleague David Trachtenberg.
We’re just waiting to see the Nuclear Posture Review to finish it. The excitement is unbearable.
Tom Donnelly is director of the Center for Defense Studies.
