{"id":505535,"date":"2010-04-02T13:50:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=81306"},"modified":"2010-04-02T13:50:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:50:34","slug":"administration-to-signal-shift-away-from-a-nuclear-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/505535","title":{"rendered":"Administration to Signal Shift Away From a Nuclear Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_81309\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 490px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/obama-nuke.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-81309\" title=\"President Obama discusses nuclear safety and sanctions against Iran on Tuesday. (Pete Marovich\/ZUMApress.com)\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/obama-nuke-480x338.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Obama discusses nuclear safety and sanctions against Iran on Tuesday. (Pete Marovich\/ZUMApress.com)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Set for release early next week, the Obama administration&#8217;s long-awaited  statement on the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile won&#8217;t  provide a roadmap for their elimination, according to administration  officials. But it will chip away at the strategic justification for the  stockpile and shift the country&#8217;s defense away from nuclear weapons,  beginning a gradual process pointing to their elimination over decades  and setting the tone for months&#8217; worth of diplomatic work to strengthen  cooperation on nuclear security &#8212; a top priority for President Obama.<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_2848\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 140px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2848\" title=\"nationalsecurity\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/nationalsecurity.jpg\" alt=\"Image by: Matt Mahurin\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by: Matt Mahurin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"floatButtons\">\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"\n\tsrc=\"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/ds\/badge2.js\"\n\tbadgetype=\"square\">\n\t<?php the_permalink(); ?><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\">\n\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\ntweetmeme_source = \"TWI_news\";\ntweetmeme_service = \"bit.ly\";\n<\/script> <script src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p> The  administration will publish the Nuclear Posture Review, a document  outlining the role of nuclear weapons in overall U.S. defense planning,  barely a week after the United States and Russia agreed to wide-ranging  cuts in their nuclear arsenal. Months of arduous closed-door interagency  negotiations over the document have led arms control enthusiasts on the  left to worry that the document won&#8217;t go far enough to wean the U.S.  off nuclear weapons and led nuclear hawks on the right to fear it will  compromise national security.<\/p>\n<p>Expect the left to be more  disappointed than the right. &#8220;Don&#8217;t look for any time frame to go to  zero&#8221; nuclear weapons, said a senior administration official who, like  the others interviewed for this story, would not speak for the record  before the so-called NPR is released. The document will reaffirm the  need for the &#8220;nuclear triad&#8221; of delivery systems for nuclear weapons:  intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and  submarine-launched missiles. Nor will the NPR call for the prompt  withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe or for taking  deployed weapons off of hair-trigger alert, high priorities for a  coalition of arms-control experts who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armscontrol.org\/pressroom\/lettertoPOTUS\">wrote to Obama  on Feb. 1<\/a>. Perhaps most importantly, it will offer vague language  &#8212; the product of interagency compromises &#8212; on whether the U.S. will  renounce the doctrinal right to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict.<\/p>\n<p>But  according to officials involved in crafting the NPR, the document will  break from its predecessors in reorienting nuclear strategy away from  deterring or winning a nuclear conflict with an adversary and embrace  the concept that the principal nuclear threat to the U.S. is nuclear  terrorism and nuclear proliferation itself &#8212; a change that proponents  view as undercutting the rationale for keeping the U.S. nuclear  stockpile over time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That by itself is transformational,&#8221; said  Joe Cirincione, a longtime Washington nuclear expert and president of  the anti-proliferation Ploughshares Fund. &#8220;No previous Nuclear Posture  Review has looked at the problem that way. This could be night and day  compared to the Bush posture.&#8221;<br \/>\nAccordingly, the NPR will emphasize a  reduced U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons and a greater one on  conventional forces, a position officials believe to be a more credible  deterrent of conflict, particularly toward rogue states like North Korea  and Iran and stateless adversaries like al-Qaeda and its affiliates.  Several officials said the &#8220;reduced-reliance&#8221; portions of the NPR are  crafted to reassure allies that the U.S. deterrent umbrella extends  beyond a nuclear attack on friendly forces. Similarly, the NPR will  entrench the administration&#8217;s commitment to the Iran-focused missile  defense the U.S. is constructing this decade in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Adm.  Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an  influential player in the NPR process, hinted at that approach last week  during the unveiling of the &#8220;New START&#8221; arms reduction treaty with  Russia. The treaty &#8220;protects our ability to develop a conventional  global strike capability,&#8221; Mullen said, &#8220;should that be required.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The  administration is also coalescing around a push in the Senate for  ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an international  accord rejected by the Senate in the late 1990s to prevent nuclear  testing. While the NPR will commit the administration to maintaining the  nuclear stockpile &#8212; and to foreswear the construction of new nuclear  weapons &#8212; it is expected to &#8220;talk about the effectiveness of the  arsenal without testing it,&#8221; Cirincione said. &#8220;The treaty you want to  get to is CTBT. That&#8217;s a legacy item.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a February speech,  Vice President Joe Biden appeared to offer a preview of how the NPR  might reconcile stockpile maintenance with a rejection of testing: a  renewed investment in the country&#8217;s national nuclear laboratories. &#8220;Our  labs know more about our arsenal today than when we used to explode our  weapons on a regular basis,&#8221; Biden said at the National Defense  University.<br \/>\nAdministration officials for the past week have described  the release of the NPR as effectively the opening bell in a flurry of  diplomatic activity on nuclear weapons. On Thursday, Obama and Russian  President Dmitri Medvedev will sign the New START treaty in Prague, the  site of last year&#8217;s big speech by Obama about an eventual nuke-free  world. The following week, Obama will host the leaders of 44 nations for  a summit on nuclear security, with a focus on preventing nuclear  material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Obama &#8220;wants to make  sure that at his level, the head of state level, that there\u2019s agreement  on the threats, and on the concerns, on everyone\u2019s commitments,&#8221; Ellen  Tauscher, the undersecretary of state for arms control, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/t\/us\/139205.htm\">told reporters Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That  summit will cue up two other important arms control events: the  adoption of a resolution by the United Nations Security Council placing  economic sanctions on Iran for illicit uranium enrichment activity, and a  May conference in New York on strengthening the Nuclear  Nonproliferation Treaty. Officials want to see greater penalties for  violating the treaty&#8217;s provisions or pulling out of it altogether, a  step taken with minimal reprisal by <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/2644593.stm\">North Korea in 2003<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Daryl  Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association and a  signatory of the Feb. 1 letter, said the NPR&#8217;s shift in emphasizing that  the main nuclear danger to the U.S. comes from proliferation and not  from nuclear war was an &#8220;extremely important premise&#8221; that &#8220;changes the  logic considerably&#8221; of the role, mission and size of U.S. nuclear  forces. He urged the Obama administration to adopt the full implication  of that premise in the NPR.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What will be a transformative shift  is to say that the purpose of U.S. nuclear forces is to deter nuclear  use against us and our allies,&#8221; Kimball said. &#8220;That would implicitly  eliminate from the roles and missions [any] potential use of nuclear  weapons to fight a conflict that begins as conventional or to counter  chemical or biological forces.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama discusses nuclear safety and sanctions against Iran on Tuesday. (Pete Marovich\/ZUMApress.com) Set for release early next week, the Obama administration&#8217;s long-awaited statement on the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile won&#8217;t provide a roadmap for their elimination, according to administration officials. But it will chip away at the strategic justification for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}