Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

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Russian Arms Treaty Still Worth It

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editor by yours truly in response to a recent op-ed by Keith Payne and Mark Scheinder’s alleging that Russia is a serial violator of arms control treaties and the Obama administration has been uniquely weak in calling out Russia’s bad behavior.  Here’s an excerpt:

In addition, the claim that Russia cheats on all treaties is overstated and overlooks the national security case for arms control. Overall, the implementation record of arms-control agreements with Russia has been highly successful—which is why both Republican and Democratic presidents have pursued such agreements. Without these efforts Russian forces would be unconstrained, our ability to verify what Russia is doing would be curtailed and we would have few options but to engage in a costly arms race.

 You can read the full letter here.

On the issue of arms racing, it’s certainly true that even if, for example, Russia wasn’t constrained by INF, the United States would still have powerful economic, political, and strategic reasons for not responding by building and deploying intermediate range nuclear forces. What’s more, the United States and Russia have a long history of reducing nuclear forces unilaterally without treaties. Furthermore, the current budget environment in the United States might require reductions in the US arsenal with or without Russia reciprocity.

But at the very least, the absence of constraints on Russia’s forces would increase the incentives and pressure to engage in costly worst case scenario planning that Washington would otherwise not engage in. It’s not clear what leverage we would have to reduce the Russian nuclear threat in the absence of say, INF. The United States and Russia have far more nuclear weapons than they need for their security. Negotiated limits on Russian nuclear forces can still play a role in reducing nuclear risks – especially at at a time of increased tensions between the two countries.

Two new nuclear weapons budget pieces

Since returning from paternity leave I’ve penned two new pieces on the issue of the costs of nuclear weapons. The first, published in RealClearDefense, assesses the conclusions of the recently released report of the National Defense Panel Review of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review on the costs of nuclear weapons. Here’s how I end the piece:

The NDP [National Defense Panel] recognizes that current resources don’t match requirements. The longer current nuclear spending plans remain on autopilot, the more likely it will be that the budget will force suboptimal tradeoffs between nuclear and other national security programs, as well as possible reductions in nuclear forces by financial default. Fortunately, the United States can guarantee its security and that of its allies in a more fiscally sustainable manner by continuing to pursue further reductions in U.S. nuclear forces and scaling back current modernization plans.

Read the whole thing here.

The second piece rebuts the oft-repeated claim by some Air Force nuclear leaders that the cost of the Air Force nuclear enterprise is relatively cheap. Here’s an excerpt:

While the current costs of the Air Force legs of the triad may be cheaper than some other Pentagon programs, these aren’t the only costs. For example, Harencak’s one-year tally ignores the large financial and opportunity costs of current plans to modernize and recapitalize all elements of the Air Force nuclear enterprise, the bulk of which have yet to (but will soon) hit the balance sheets. While the Air Force has been less than transparent about the extent of the bill, it has already acknowledged these costs will be substantial. So substantial, in fact, that the service leadership is looking for assistance from elsewhere in the Pentagon to help pick up the tab.

The entire piece is available here.

On the Anniversary of Hiroshima, We Must Reinvigorate the Pursuit of a Safer and More Secure World

Today marks the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more would later die from radiation exposure.

Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second, bigger atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately and obliterating everything within a 1,000-yard radius.

Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in a radio broadcast on August 15, citing the devastating power of a “new and most cruel” bomb.

Today, we remember the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons and remind ourselves that though it has been nearly seven decades since the first atomic bomb was used in warfare, the threat of a nuclear disaster is not a vestige of some bygone era.  

Thanks to important agreements and significant unilateral reductions by the United States, Russia, and other nuclear weapons states, the global stockpile of nuclear weapons is significantly less than it was during the Cold War. However, at least 17,000 nuclear weapons that we know of still exist today in nine countries, with many on hair-trigger, launch-ready status.

Furthermore, 21st century global security continues to be fashioned upon the crumbling edifice of nuclear deterrence. Our continued reliance on weapons that have the ability to annihilate nations but do little to address the rise of violent extremists like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or the deteriorating situation Afghanistan, makes us less safe, not more secure.

We need to continue to work with others to decrease global nuclear stockpiles, and use the billions of dollars we spend on relics of the Cold War to develop creative solutions to present and future threats.

In addition to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by nine nations, there is nearly 2,000 metric tons of nuclear material spread across hundreds of sites in 25 countries, and not much of it is effectively secured. We know that terrorists are bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon, and according to former Senator Sam Nunn, a determined group or individual “would only need enough highly enriched uranium to fit into a 5-pound bad of sugar or enough plutonium the size of a grapefruit” to fashion a crude nuclear device.

The tragic attacks of September 11, 2001—and the discovery of A.Q. Khan’s nuclear technology black market just a few years later—should open our eyes to the dangerous and unpredictable world in which we live today.

While there have been many important accomplishments in reducing the threat of lost or stolen nuclear material (particularly during President Obama’s first term) now is not the time to rest upon our laurels. It is important now more than ever to appropriately fund critical nonproliferation programs at home and abroad that work to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, and keep them out of the hands of terrorists.

In a recent interview ahead of the anniversary, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller reinforced President Obama’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. Referring to the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, Gottemoeller stated that the “United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring nonnuclear attacks” and seek to make deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States or our allies “the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons.”

Today, we use this solemn anniversary as motivation to ensure that our leader’s words mean something, and continue our tireless march towards a more balanced national security strategy and a safer world.    

Remembering Szilard: 75th Anniversary of Einstein-Szilard Letter to Roosevelt

“In the course of the last four months it has been made probable…that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable- though much less certain- that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”

On August 2, 1939, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard sent this warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter signed by none other than Albert Einstein.

Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter. And yet the dangers Szilard warned against in his letter 75 years ago still loom over society: now in the form of over ten thousand nuclear warheads spread across the globe. In revisiting the writings of Leo Szilard, it is chilling to note how many of his words, drafted in a different era, still apply to the world today. Much has changed since the Einstein-Szilard letter arrived on the doorstep of President Roosevelt 75 years ago; leadership has risen and fallen, technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, wars and revolutions have sparked and faded. Yet still the threat of nuclear war remains. Worse, that threat has proliferated.

Scientists have always played a complex role with regard to nuclear weapons. While nuclear physicists were the individuals immediately responsible for the weapons’ design and creation, the same nuclear physicists were often the individuals protesting the government’s use of these weapons and warning against the inevitability of their eventual proliferation. Such was the case with Leo Szilard, a man vital to the atomic bomb’s construction.

Among Szilard’s numerous scientific innovations, he was the first to conceptualize and later successfully test a controlled uranium nuclear chain reaction, a chemical process integral to creating an atomic explosion. It was this discovery that compelled him to draft the Einstein-Szilard letter on August 2, 1939, cautioning the President on the new implications for nuclear weapons and urging Roosevelt to act. Roosevelt took the letter to heart; his choice of action was to charge Szilard and a team of other scientists with the Manhattan Project, a project with the ultimate goal of creating an atomic bomb for the United States.

However, when we remember Szilard today, it is not solely for his role as a physicist in constructing the first atomic bomb. It is also for his role as an advocate, in championing messages of peace and disarmament to a world that seemed set on war and destruction. In this way, Szilard embodies the kind of scientists who have fought and continue to fight for a responsible and ethical approach towards nuclear weapons. Today, organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientists for Global Responsibility, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continue to warn of the dangers that nuclear weapons pose to society. Where Szilard first cautioned against nuclear threats from Germany and later from the Soviet Union, scientists today point towards a multitude of possible disaster scenarios: tensions in South Asia and the Korean peninsula resulting in nuclear exchanges, non-state actors obtaining nuclear weapons through theft, and nuclear terrorism in the Middle East are just a handful of the frightening possibilities.

The Einstein-Szilard letter may have been the beginning, but Leo Szilard continued to write extensively on the topic long after the Manhattan Project concluded. He wrote against the use and spread of nuclear weapons following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, protesting their usefulness during the Cold War. In Szilard’s 1961 speech “Are We on the Road To War”, he stated his argument succinctly:

             “If we intend to drop our bombs on Russia in case of war and expect Russia
              to drop her bombs on us, so that both countries would be wholly devastated,
              then our threat to drop bombs on Russia is tantamount to a threat of murder and
              suicide.”

It is no longer 1961, but the irrational dual threat of murder and suicide lingers. Although we no longer teeter on the brink of a Cold War, the dangers of nuclear proliferation still pose a real threat.

On this 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter, we would like to commemorate Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and all the atomic scientists who condemned nuclear weapons as unethical and impractical. We would like to thank the many scientists today who still demand greater nonproliferation efforts, collaborate on possibilities for disarmament, and write on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Finally, we would like to keep in mind that although many years have passed since 1939, there is still much work to be done to create a world safe from the threat of nuclear destruction.

Nuclear Weapons in the Next Generation: Reflections on Generation Prague

Last week, I attended the State Department’s Fifth Annual Generation Prague Conference. The conference was started four years ago as a way to highlight the important perspectives and contributions of the next generation, my generation, as we work to implement the vision President Obama set forward in his 2009 speech in Prague—a world without nuclear weapons.