By John Erath
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of our Next Up in Arms Control series, commonly referred to as NUAC, in which we give new authors an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas on how to mitigate nuclear threats and make the world safer. One of the best parts of my job is working on the panel that reviews and edits NUAC submissions and seeing the depth of talent coming into the international security field. It has become all too usual for established experts in the nuclear field to bemoan a seeming lack of interest in nuclear issues among younger people, but the quality and quantity we see among the proposals we have received for NUAC point to a richness and originality of thought that indicates that the field will be in good hands when the Baby Boomers leave the scene.
Not all NUAC submissions, however, are created equal. Along with new insights and policy suggestions, we receive less developed ideas from time to time. A common issue with these proposals is that they lack a coherent strategy to improve a problem they identify. In particular, we have recently seen submissions in which the proposed way forward is more or less to tell world leaders to get rid of their nuclear weapons and hope for the best. Sometimes, this goes along with a call for a new treaty or international convention to formalize matters. Leaving aside the practical difficulty in negotiating an arms control treaty and the history of cheating on such agreements, such an approach confuses a key element of the process.
The overlooked factor here is that arms control is a means, not an end. The problem we are trying to solve is not the existence of nuclear weapons but rather the full set of issues that lead governments to decide to acquire such weapons. Nuclear weapons are difficult to build and maintain. They are inherently dangerous, and they are enormously expensive. No government decides to develop such weapons without serious perceptions that its national security, meaning the survival of the state or its regime, is under existential threat. If the policy recommendation is aimed only at denuclearization and does not address underlying security issues, it is unlikely to succeed.
The overall goal is a safer, more secure world, and arms control is one tool, a valuable one, to help us get there. It should, however, be combined with efforts to resolve the insecurities that led to the development of nuclear weapons. Can anyone imagine Israel foregoing its nuclear capabilities without some kind of broader peace in the Middle East? The Korean war never officially ending has most certainly made efforts to negotiate denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula more challenging. The great success of nuclear arms control, eliminating most of the Cold War era nuclear weapons, occurred in the context of the improved international climate following the end of the Soviet Union.
Therefore, rather than relying on hope and good will to induce governments to eliminate nuclear weapons, there should be a comprehensive strategy that includes arms control as one of its elements. If the reasons that led a government to decide to build nuclear weapons persist, it will remain virtually impossible to persuade it that national security would be higher in the absence of such weapons. Good arms control should leave all involved to feel more, not less, secure. Recently, the Baltic States left the Ottawa Convention because they decided their security would improve if they had the option to place landmines along their borders with Russia. The Ottawa Convention, which “bans” landmines but has never included the major mine producing countries, is arms control based on hope.
Hope is not a strategy.
