Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

This post was originally published at http://www.democracyarsenal.org/ and also appeared on CNN’s Global Public Square Blog.

President Obama was recently overheard saying to Russian President Medvedev that, assuming he prevails in the election this November, he would have more flexibility to negotiate on arms control issues. In response, some Congressional Republicans have implied that President Obama may have secret plans to aggressively pursue arms control in his second term.

Perhaps Republicans are concerned that the United States will cut its arsenal in half. Maybe they are concerned that President Obama will eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.  Or, maybe they are concerned he would do something dramatic like try to negotiate the total elimination of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. Well, if he were to accomplish any of these tasks, he would be in good company. These are all feats attempted by Republican Presidents in their second terms.  Every second term Republican President since the beginning of the nuclear age (i.e. Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II) proposed drastic changes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

George W. Bush

Most recently, President George W. Bush made sweeping reductions to the U.S. nuclear arsenal during his second term. In 2007, President Bush approved a nearly 50 percent cut in the deployed nuclear stockpile and pledged to cut it by an additional 15% by 2012. Notably, the announcement of these reductions occurred while the Bush administration was simultaneously planning to cut 7,200 nuclear weapons-related jobs, arguing that the way in which the United States maintained its nuclear weapons was outdated and cost too much.

At the time, not a single prominent Republican attacked President Bush for pursuing such a policy. In fact, in 2004, Republican Chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which is responsible for funding nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy, applauded President Bush’s effort to reduce nuclear weapons, stating “it may not be to the degree of where he wants to get right now, but it’s a lot better than where we are today” and “After years of maintaining a nuclear stockpile sized for the Cold War, we are finally bringing the numbers down to a more realistic and responsible level.” In contrast, Republicans have relentlessly attacked President Obama, who has provided more money for nuclear weapons than any previous president and pursued extremely modest reductions by his predecessor’s standards, because of perceived “underfunding” or lack of commitment to the nuclear stockpile.

Ronald Reagan

Arguably, President Reagan made more progress in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons in his second term than any other President, Democrat or Republican. While his eventual support for the abolition of nuclear weapons is widely known, his ambitious efforts to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons deserve more attention.

Following the 1983 incident in which Soviet leaders, interpreting a U.S. nuclear exercise as a first strike, prepared to launch nuclear weapons against the United States, President Reagan became more hands on in dealing with nuclear weapons policy. In a 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev discussed a proposal for completely eliminating Soviet and U.S. nuclear weapons. Although they were not able to agree on terms, this marks the closest any President has ever come to abolishing nuclear weapons altogether. In 1987, President Reagan signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces in Europe Treaty (INF). The INF required the United States and USSR to verifiably eliminate nuclear missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles. Throughout this period, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated to increase transparency and verification of nuclear testing and, despite being criticized by his own party, Reagan made significant progress in negotiating reductions in deployed strategic nuclear weapons. This negotiation process was completed by his successor, George H.W. Bush, in the form of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Richard Nixon

President Nixon’s second term lasted slightly over a year and a half; yet, even he was able to make progress in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. In 1973, Nixon signed the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, helping to reinforce détente between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1974, he signed the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from conducting nuclear tests greater than 150 kilotons, a precursor to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. During this time, Nixon also pursued further restrictions on US and Soviet nuclear arms, building on the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT I) between the Soviet Union and the United States negotiated during his first term.

Dwight Eisenhower

President Eisenhower was certainly no dove when it came to nuclear weapons, approving significant quantitative and qualitative increases in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. However, towards the end of his presidency, Eisenhower also began moving away from his hawkish nuclear ways. In his second term, Eisenhower began legitimate negotiations on a verifiable test ban, which included working with Khrushchev to draft a treaty.  In 1959, he was also the first President to establish a testing moratorium. While the moratorium expired in December 1959, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons again until 1961.

This brings us to Barack Obama, who of course has yet to win a second term, but has made no secret of his goals regarding reducing the threat from nuclear weapons. In a speech President Obama delivered on March 26 at Hankuk University in Seoul, Korea, President Obama renewed his pledge to further reduce the threat of nuclear weapons by “taking concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” The speech outlined a number of goals the President first proposed in Prague in April 2009 and would seek during his second term, including ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and further reductions in all types of Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons. Contrary to arguments put forth by critics, these goals are the continuation of decades of work by Republican Presidents in their second terms.

Below is the Fissile Materials Working Group’s response to the outcome of the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, including reaction from Center Deputy Director Duyeon Kim.

CONTACT: In South Korea Sean Harder (sharder@stanleyfoundation.org or 912-210-2862); in United States Jim Baird (jim@rethinkmedia.org or 202-510-7586)

Seoul Nuclear Security Summit Delivers Modest Results

Experts Call for Bolder Action to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

The communiqué and commitments world leaders agreed to today at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit mark a modest but important step forward in the effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the globe. However, bolder action is needed to effectively counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, according to the Fissile Materials Working Group (FMWG), an international coalition of nuclear security experts.

“Several key steps should be taken prior to the next Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in 2014. States should institutionalize binding, comprehensive standards for security that emphasize performance and accountability,” said Ken Luongo, co-chair of the FMWG and president of the Partnership for Global Security.

“The current nuclear material security regime is a patchwork of unaccountable voluntary arrangements that are inconsistent across borders,” Luongo said. “This system is not commensurate with either the risk or consequences of nuclear terrorism. Consistent standards, transparency to promote international confidence, and national accountability are additions to the regime that are urgently needed.”

Outcomes of particular note from the Seoul Summit include setting a target date of 2014 for bringing the amendment of the Convention for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM) into force; the addition of several nations such as Italy pledging to eliminate their stocks of fissile material; and an agreement between the U.S., France, Belgium and the Netherlands to produce medical isotopes without the use of highly enriched uranium by 2015.

“These pledges represent the most concrete results from the summit and represent some useful steps forward,” said Miles Pomper, senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and FMWG Steering Committee member. “If they are to be realized, however, the White House will have to be more active than it has been in winning congressional support for appropriate legislation and sufficient funding.”

Duyeon Kim, deputy director of nuclear nonproliferation, at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, lauded the inclusion of the nuclear safety and security interface in the Communiqué in the aftermath of Fukushima that demonstrated that a Fukushima-like terrorist attack is plausible.

“Notable achievements [in the Communiqué] is a consensus on and vision for strengthening nuclear safety-security as well as raising the importance of radiological security since the 2010 Summit,” Kim said. “Not only did world leaders acknowledge the overlap between nuclear safety and security, but they’ve agreed that the measures need to be incorporated in all stages including effective emergency preparedness. It’s an extremely significant first step but the key is implementing and sustaining measures that strengthen the nuclear safety-security nexus beyond 2014 as long as we opt for nuclear power to meet our energy needs.”

“Also, setting a target date to announce each country’s plans on minimizing the civilian use of HEU by the end of 2013 is a positive step forward but so far it’s an ‘encouragement’ to do so and the key is in the details, which are unclear.”

By the end of the four-year effort, there will be major progress in reducing the risk of nuclear theft and terrorism, said Matthew Bunn, co-principal investigator of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and FMWG Steering Committee member.

“But we won’t be done – keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands will require a culture of continual improvement sustained as long as nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them continue to exist,” Bunn said. “With at least two and probably three major terrorist groups having pursued nuclear weapons over the last 20 years, we cannot expect they will be the last,” Bunn said. “Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, the world is likely to be confronting the danger of nuclear terrorism as long as nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them continue to exist.”

Post-summit reactions from other FMWG members include:

*       Alexandra Toma, FMWG co-chair and executive director of the Connect U.S. Fund: “Leaders should be proud of what’s been accomplished to date, but they must also be realistic that global nuclear security cannot be accomplished in four years, as they originally agreed. A challenge as great as global nuclear terrorism requires constant vigilance and further improvements to the current system, which still remains a patchwork of voluntary agreements. Let’s keep momentum going through the 2014 Summit in the Netherlands and beyond.”

*       Sico van der Meer, research fellow, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael: “Improving global nuclear security is a long-term process, the problem will not be solved in only a few years. This is why the Netherlands is fully committed to organize the third Nuclear Security Summit in 2014. These high-level summits are the best guarantee to retain international attention.”

*       Sharon Squassoni, director and senior fellow, Proliferation Prevention Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, “The Seoul meeting demonstrates that summit diplomacy can only accomplish so much.  States should use the time between now and the next summit to identify and target additional gaps in protection against nuclear terrorism as a high priority.”

*       Nobuyasu Abe, director of the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-proliferation at the Japan Institute of International Affairs: “A willful and targeted act of terrorism would be more vicious than the natural disasters that may hit nuclear power stations or spent fuel storages. There is no unilateral solution to the shared global threat posed by nuclear terrorism. More countries must be enlisted in this truly global endeavor. Our best defense is a strong, united front to prevent nuclear terror.”

The FMWG, a nongovernmental coalition of over 65 U.S. and international expert organizations, aims to provide action-oriented and innovative policy solutions to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism. For more information, visit www.fmwg.org