Head over to the Center’s website to see the new factsheet Kingston and I co-authored on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT).

The proposed FMCT is one of the many nonproliferation initiatives that languished during the Bush years. It was first discussed in the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report on the international control of atomic energy and the Baruch Plan. President Obama breathed new life into the idea in his Prague speech on April 5.  

In short, the FMCT would ban the production of all fissile material suitable for use in nuclear weapons. It could also address existing stockpiles earmarked for blend-down or for use in nuclear powered subs. All five Nuclear Weapons States stopped production of weapons-grade fissile material by 1996, and all five support a verifiable FMCT.  

Discussions on the FMCT are carried out through the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD). The initiative has been stalled several times since the official resumption of talks in 1995. Israel has said that it opposes any FMCT that doesn’t address the Iranian nuclear threat. Pakistan opposes an FMCT without limits on stockpiles because it is concerned that India’s current stockpile is larger than its own.

With so many seemingly immovable roadblocks, agreement on the FMCT is a ways off. But it has been a fixture in nonproliferation circles since the inception of nuclear weapons technology and efforts to bring it to fruition will continue, particularly now that Obama is in charge.

This week, the Senate began debating an amendment, backed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and Ranking Member John McCain, which would strip $1.75 billion for seven additional F-22s from the 2010 Defense Authorization bill. A vote on th…

The Defense Authorization bill being considered by the Senate this week would buy taxpayers seven shiny new F-22 Raptors for the paltry sum of $1.75 billion. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has shed doubt on the utility of the F-22s in security terms and suggested a cap of 187 stealth jets. Yet Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who introduced an amendment to strip the F-22 funds, are up against the formidable will of the oldest of American institutions: the Military Industrial Complex.

The appeal of the F-22 lies not in its much-hyped stealth capabilities or its combat-tested credentials. Indeed, it has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan. The appeal of the F-22 lies in the fact that it is manufactured in 44 states by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and an army of lesser subcontractors. Senators have lashed out because of their concern that ending F-22 production will mean the loss of skilled manufacturing jobs.

Lo and behold, the Center for Responsive Politics published a list of Boeing and Lockheed’s PAC contributions to members of Congress for the 2009-2010 election cycle. You don’t have to look too closely to see that members representing key production sites for the F-22 – like Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss – are among the top recipients of campaign dollars. Members who serve on the Armed Services and Defense Appropriations committees are also top beneficiaries of defense contractors’ limitless generosity.

Thanks to CRP for this timely airing of dirty laundry.

Is there a link between the nuclear postures of the nuclear weapons states and nonproliferation?  

In their recent Op-Ed attacking President Obama’s approach toward nuclear weapons, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Richard Perle argued that there is such a link, but only in so far as the nuclear umbrella that the United States extends to protect its allies ensures that these allies do not have to acquire their own nuclear weapons.  They scoffed at another interpretation of this link, which is that in maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states, particularly the U.S. and Russia, increase the incentives other states have to acquire nuclear weapons and make it more difficult to, among other objectives, marshal international support to put added pressure on North Korea and Iran.  As Kyl and Perle put it:

There is a fashionable notion that if only we and the Russians reduced our nuclear forces, other nations would reduce their existing arsenals or abandon plans to acquire nuclear weapons altogether. This idea, an article of faith of the “soft power” approach to halting nuclear proliferation, assumes that the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces — or that India, Pakistan or China would respond with reductions of their own.

As I noted at the time, this fashionable notion is a straw man.  Over at Democracy Arsenal, David Shorr does a much better job than I did of explaining the relevance of U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions to stemming the spread of nuclear weapons.  “I don’t know anyone who believes that nuclear arms cuts will cause a spontaneous change of heart in Iranian or North Korean leaders,” writes Shorr, “but here’s what I do believe:

-that disarmament moves by the nuclear ‘haves’ will serve the ball into their court, lessening US policy as the topic of focus in nonproliferation diplomacy and putting the spotlight squarely on the nuclear wannabes

-that living up to our end of the bargain will give us a strong argument to draw greater international support and increased pressure on Iran and North Korea

-that no regime is immune to outside pressure and that such regimes have countervailing interests that weigh against building nuclear arsenals (otherwise there wouldn’t be such a hot debate in Iran over relations with the West)

-that moral authority must be combined with tough diplomacy and the remote but implicit threat of hard (conventional armed) power

-that we have many times more nuclear weapons than can be reasonably justified

-and that taking a hard line — preserving military strength regardless of strategic rationale, issuing demands rather than bargaining hard over possible solutions — makes even less of an impact and offers zero possibility of inducing cooperation.

 “In other words,” Shorr concludes, “we have no choice.”

The key takeaway here is that we do not know for sure that U.S. and Russian nuclear reductions will set the example or have the impact that we hope.  However, we have very little to lose and everything to gain from testing this hypothesis, not only because it is a promise we made to the non-nuclear weapons states at the 1995 NPT Review Conference in return for their agreement to extend the NPT indefinitely, but also because the status quo has done nothing to alter North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Or to quote the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission:

at a time when the United States is considering how to reduce nuclear dangers globally, it is essential that it pursue cooperative, binding measures with others….The Commission does not believe that unilateral nuclear reductions by the United States would have any positive impact on countries like North Korea and Iran. But some other nations may not show the nuclear restraint the United States desires or support nonproliferation efforts if the nuclear weapon states take no further agreed steps to decrease their reliance on nuclear arms. [emphasis mine].

The Wall Street Journal’s Melanie Kirkpatrick traveled to Maclean to interview former Secretary of Defense Dr. James Schlesinger.  The result was, well: For nuclear strategists, Mr. Schlesinger is Yoda, the master of their universe. I know.  …