Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger and Richard Falk

Nuclear Disarmament: Letter in the New York Times

This letter to the editor was printed in the November 15, 2012, edition of The New York Times.

To the Editor:

We share with your editorial (“The Foreign Policy Agenda,” Nov. 12) the view that one of President Obama’s “singular contributions has been his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.” We would go further and suggest that realizing this vision would ensure Mr. Obama a legacy of honor, not only for America, but also for the world.

Your editorial adds a caveat that nuclear disarmament “is a lofty goal that won’t be achieved in his second term, or maybe for years after that.” We dissent from this bit of conventional wisdom that almost always accompanies the affirmation of the goal, nearly taking back what was so grandly proposed.

In our view, there has rarely been a better time to initiate a negotiated process of phased nuclear disarmament, and there is no reason that such a process should be stretched out over a long period. We are at one of those few times in international history with no acute conflict between major states.

In our view, the United States should prepare proposals for nuclear disarmament and convene an international conference of the nine nuclear-weapon states. Nothing could do more to restore America’s claim to world leadership. At the very least, President Obama would belatedly show that his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was not wrongly awarded.

RICHARD FALK
DAVID KRIEGER
Santa Barbara, Calif.

The writers are senior vice president and president, respectively, of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

November 14, 2012
Nuclear Dangers and Opportunities in the Middle East

Iran’s uranium enrichment program has drawn much criticism, and there has been talk in both Israel and the United States of possible attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities. The drift toward a military solution seems to be gathering an alarming momentum, with little public discussion of alternative approaches in the mainstream US media. There would likely be very heavy costs associated with carrying out such attacks.

Iranian leaders have a variety of instruments available for retaliation, and there is little reason to think that these would not be used. It is highly probable that Israel would be attacked in response by Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which have the capabilities to inflict serious damage. Even more damage could be done by Iran itself, which is developing long-range delivery capacities by way of advanced missile technology and a type of bomb-carrying drone aircraft.

There exists also the Iranian option to block passage through the Strait of Hormuz through which two-thirds of the world’s imported oil travels, undoubtedly producing supply shortages, a spike in prices, long gas lines in countries around the world, and global economic chaos. Beyond this, there are a variety of unresolved conflicts in the region that could be easily inflamed by Iranian interventions, most obviously Iraq.

Attacks against Iran, as a non-defensive recourse to force, would violate international law and the UN Charter. Force is only lawful in international conflict situations if used as self-defense in response to a prior armed attack. The core Charter commitment in Article 2(4) prohibits threats as well as uses of force. By that standard, both Israel and the United States, by their threats alone, may already be viewed as law-breakers. The actual use of force would leave no doubt.

A far better option than attacking Iran would be attempting to negotiate a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. There is widespread support for this initiative among the governments in the region and the world. It was a priority goal agreed to by consensus at the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. But there is one large catch that has so far been a decisive inhibitor: Israel is unalterably opposed, as the establishment of the zone would require Israel to dismantle its own nuclear weapons arsenal.

Obviously, the idea of a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone has little regional appeal if it does not include Israel. Israel’s insistence on retaining nuclear weapons while being ready to wage a war, with menacing repercussions, to prevent Iran from acquiring such weaponry is expressive of the deeply troubling double standards that are an overall feature of the nonproliferation regime.

A Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone would immediately improve overall regional stability and, as well, take account of the prospect of many Arab countries poised to embark on nuclear energy programs of their own. Indeed, without such a zone, there is a substantial possibility of a regional nuclear arms race that would tempt countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Iran, to have the supposed deterrent benefits of a nuclear arsenal.

A Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone that includes all the countries of the region is an issue that demands U.S. leadership. Only the United States has the leverage and stature to bring the diverse cast of regional actors to the negotiating table to make the needed effort to avert war. There can be no advance assurances that such a diplomatic initiative would succeed, but to fail to try would be lamentable.

September 13, 2010
The New US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

Falk:   The New START treaty successfully negotiated between the United States and Russia imposed several limits on strategic armaments. It calls for the reduction of the number of deployed strategic warheads by approximately 30 percent and reduces the number of deployed launchers that each side has to 700. This seems like an intrinsically desirable step and a stabilizing step. But the question it raises in my mind is whether this represents a first step in the realization of President Obama’s Prague vision of a year ago that spoke so eloquently about a world without nuclear weapons; or whether it should be conceived as a return to the managerial approach associated with arms control during the Cold War, where these kind of stabilizing arrangements between the Soviet Union and the United States represented not a path toward nuclear disarmament, but a managerial substitute for nuclear disarmament. Such a path clearly was beneficial, diminishing risks of certain kinds of instability in the arms race between the two superpowers and kept costs of maintaining nuclear weapons arsenals within agreed boundaries.

Krieger:   There are elements of both perspectives in this agreement. Those who are making the agreement would argue that it is a step in the right direction, but it is also a necessary step to deal with the discontent that exists among the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. While the US and Russia were willing to miss the December 2009 deadline of the expiration of the START 1 treaty, which this replaces, it appears that they were not willing to miss the deadline of having this treaty in place prior to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which will be held in May. My reading of the timing of this treaty is that it’s designed to show the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT that the US and Russia are at least demonstrating signs of life when it comes to issues of nuclear disarmament and not disregarding their promises and obligations, as I would say was largely the case during the previous eight years leading up to the assumption of power by the Obama administration.

Falk:   Yes, I think that’s a very important double point. In other words, that this agreement, however one describes it, does establish for Obama a sense that he is pursuing security issues in the nuclear weapons context in a different and more responsible way than was done during the Bush presidency. And, secondly, I think you’re absolutely right that a primary incentive to reach this kind of agreement at this time was to provide reassurance to the non-nuclear states just prior to the NPT Review Conference that the two leading nuclear weapons states were themselves trying to do something by way of denuclearization to make the world a safer place. I still believe it leaves open the question as to whether we who believe in the importance of the Prague vision of zero nuclear weapons being taken seriously as a political project (and not just as high flown rhetoric or easily dismissed as “utopian”) should view this New START treaty with enthusiasm or with a certain prudent skepticism. I feel, as someone who has been disappointed often in the past by the pretention that arms control is positively linked to a disarmament agenda, that we as citizens should at least express a certain skepticism about what is going on, particularly if, as seems likely, there will be a big domestic fight to get this treaty ratified in the course of which the administration is probably likely to give additional reassurances up front and behind the scenes that it will be cautious about any further steps to reduce the quality and size of the US nuclear weapons arsenal. It would be acceptable, and probably desirable, to support the ratification of this treaty, but with eyes wide open as to its probable irrelevance to achieving a disarming world.

Krieger:   There are a few things we can say with certainty. One is that the lowering of the numbers of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles is something to be looked at positively. At least it is movement in the right direction. The second point, though, is that the numbers that are agreed upon are still far more than enough to destroy civilization and most life on the planet. So while this may be a positive step, it hasn’t removed the most serious danger of nuclear war as a possibility. That’s an issue that citizens in both countries need to be aware of, and certainly we shouldn’t be looking at this treaty as an end in itself. I’m sure that President Obama and President Medvedev agree that this was meant to be a next step and not the final goal.

Falk:   Don’t you think that has always been said about arms control agreements? If you look back at the Cold War, at the various agreements, they were always said to be steps in the right direction, but look where we ended up.

Krieger:   Right, but even in his Prague speech, President Obama tempered his vision of a world without nuclear weapons by saying that it was doubtful that it could happen within his lifetime. So he has already expressed the possibility of parameters that go far beyond his control. To show real seriousness, the kind of seriousness for achieving a world without nuclear weapons that you’re looking for and that I’m looking for, would require President Obama – I think United States leadership is essential here – to initiate negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the elimination of nuclear weapons. That would promise to be a complicated process, which would involve not only the US and Russia and the other nuclear weapon states, but all countries in the world in serious negotiations. Initiating those negotiations would constitute a benchmark for real seriousness about nuclear disarmament as opposed to arms control measures and as opposed to a primary concern with stopping proliferation or the spread of nuclear weapons.

Falk:   I agree with you and would extend that argument a little bit by saying that this kind of arms control reduction, as you correctly take note of, doesn’t really change the fundamental vulnerability of the world to a catastrophic or apocalyptic use of the weaponry and, indeed, keeps intact a very large nuclear weapons capability for both leading nuclear weapon states. It even increases appropriations over the next five years so as to upgrade the weaponry being retained. In this sense, since the arsenal will remain very large, and under no circumstances would more than a small percentage of such weaponry be considered relevant for use, it could be that the total impact of these adjustments will make the United States and Russia more attached to these weapons than previously. But I would go one step further and say that if the intention of this treaty was to minimize the role of nuclear weapons in world politics, a more direct and less difficult path would have been to agree upon and solicit the participation of the other nuclear weapon states in a declaration of No First Use with regard to nuclear weapons. An unequivocal declaration, reinforced by adjustments in doctrines and deployment, exhibits a much clearer repudiation of the relevance of nuclear weaponry to the pursuit of national interests. Such a declaration would reveal with some clarity the intention of a government with regard to the role of these weapons. The refusal of governments to renounce first use options is a significant signal that disarmament, as distinct from arms control, is unlikely to become a serious policy option in the future, and I have felt this way ever since the original use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities in 1945. And likewise, this unwillingness to make such a No First Use declaration compromises claims to abhor the weaponry and expressions of intention to avoid any future use.

   If a government claims the necessity of possessing this weaponry of mass destruction, then at least it should limit the claim to circumstances of actual necessity, which would imply confining the role of nuclear weapons to a purely deterrent role and, even then, available only in a defensive mode as a possible retaliatory weapon whose existence is mainly intended to discourage others from ever using them first. This failure after so many decades to make such a declaration raises serious doubts in my mind as to whether there is really the intentionality needed in this country, and likely elsewhere, to move seriously toward the elimination of the weaponry.

   I’d say just one further thought on this: That it also would have been possible for the Obama administration to propose the establishment of nuclear weapon-free zones, particularly in the Middle East, where the danger of some kind of war connected with these weapons, either to prevent others from obtaining them or to initiate a preemptive attack of some kind, seems to pose a particularly serious danger. The unwillingness to endorse this kind of initiative, even though it has been around for quite a while, is again an indication to me that despite the Prague speech and the rhetoric contained therein, that the Obama presidency is not going to challenge the long and well established nuclear weapons status quo. In the Middle East the Obama presidency is undoubtedly inhibited by not wanting to exert pressure on Israel to take part in an arrangement to ensure the elimination of the weaponry in the region, but if true, it confirms the relatively low strategic priority attached to denuclearization goals.

Krieger:   I took the Prague speech as a sign of hope, particularly in relation to the previous eight years of the Bush presidency, but at the same time, more an argument for measures for nonproliferation than for disarmament. The issues that were emphasized in the Prague speech were arms reductions, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and stopping terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. I don’t disagree with any of those points, but I do think that they belong on to the side of nonproliferation rather than nuclear disarmament. The one thing that President Obama really has never spoken publicly about in the Prague speech or elsewhere is No First Use of nuclear weapons. As you know, the US government has just released a new Nuclear Posture Review. This Nuclear Posture Review will set the parameters for US nuclear policy for at least the years of the Obama administration and possibly beyond. I understand that the idea of No First Use was discussed and rejected. As positive as it would be to have pledges of No First Use and leadership from the United States on that issue, it was rejected. This suggests that arms control and nonproliferation are higher priorities than nuclear disarmament. I would also mention that as a candidate, President Obama talked about de-alerting the US nuclear arsenal, taking the weapons off of high alert. That would be another positive step in demonstrating a devaluation of the US nuclear arsenal. But that also seems to have dropped from the agenda and the US and Russia still maintain a total of some 2,000 strategic weapons on hair-trigger alert. There are far more nuclear weapons than that, but there are still a thousand on each side, approximately, that are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so.

       On nuclear weapon-free zones, that is an area that deserves support. We now have nuclear weapon-free zones in most of the southern hemisphere of the world. But even though the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty promised in 1995 – in some states’ eyes as a condition of extending the treaty – to work toward a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East, that not only has not come to pass, but there hasn’t been much effort in that direction. That creates a far more dangerous situation than need be in the most volatile part of the world.

Falk:   Yes, I agree, and I think that the discussion we’ve had up to this point does raise the question of whether those who really believe that it is morally, legally, and politically desirable to work seriously toward nuclear disarmament – that it is in fact overdue, but that goal be affirmed and steps taken to realize it – should be complicit in this continuing dynamic of shifting the emphasis to arms control and nonproliferation. I see no evidence that there is any kind of political project underway that seeks to achieve nuclear disarmament and, until I see that, I am very skeptical that if one wants to get to zero, this is the path that will get the country and the world moving in that direction. My related point here is that we need to make clear as an educational priority that strengthening the nonproliferation regime and managing existing nuclear weapons arsenals may be helpful steps, but that there is every indication that such steps are leading to a dead end if our goal is zero nuclear weapons. I would even argue that the historical evidence supports the view that progress in arms control tends to divert attention from disarmament and removes the goal of zero altogether from the policy agenda. We as citizens should do our best to prevent this from happening.

Krieger:   It puts people like ourselves and organizations such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in a difficult bind. On the one hand, to not accept the agreement that has been made as progress seems ungrateful and perhaps overly negative to the people who have been waiting for some sign of hope in this area. On the other hand, if we become too enthusiastic about the progress that has been made then we run the risk of not staying true to our goal of achieving a world without nuclear weapons. So I feel there is a necessity to walk a very careful line here, one which acknowledges that some progress has been made and, yet, still points out that there is quite a long ways to go, that we still stand in considerable risk, the future stands in risk, and that there are some far more tangible ways in which a commitment to a nuclear weapon-free world could be manifested.

Falk:   Don’t you think that there are some serious costs in labeling these kinds of steps as progress toward nuclear disarmament if one doesn’t believe that that’s where the path is leading. From my perspective, it is what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called “false consciousness” when you subscribe to a set of propositions that are in a sense trying to provide a certain form of reassurance, but the underlying reality more carefully considered actually contradicts that reassurance. And, after all, this path of arms control and nonproliferation is not something new. It has been walked upon ever since the end of World War II in one way or another with periodic brief indications of an interest in nuclear disarmament, which are then later contested as to whether they were ever sincere and meant to be taken seriously. By situating the zero goal over the horizon of Obama’s mortality, isn’t that signaling to the nuclear weapons establishment to stop worrying, and shouldn’t we by the same token start worrying! But my point is: Have we not reached a point where it is important to expose this real choice between stabilizing and minimizing some of the risks of a nuclear weapons world and making a clear commitment to the moral, legal and political imperative of getting rid of the weapons? What I’m trying to say is you can’t embrace both goals at once, although you could affirm arms control measures as holding operations. You can’t have 60 years of no real progress toward nuclear disarmament and yet continue to fool yourself into thinking that by continuing to accept arms control/nonproliferation priorities you are somehow going to achieve nuclear disarmament later on. I am really contesting your use of the word “progress.” I think the START approach and the Nuclear Posture Review represent helpful moves toward nuclear stability, but that it is an inexcusable mistake to confuse this with progress toward disarmament.

Krieger:   Let me respond in this way. I think you make an important point, but I also think that both stability and nonproliferation are necessary prerequisites to actually achieving nuclear disarmament. In other words, as long as there is a great deal of instability in the international system and as long as the prospects for nuclear proliferation are high, it seems to me that countries like the United States and Russia will err on the side of caution rather than moving energetically toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Although the primary goals at this point, certainly for the United States, are stabilization, preventing proliferation and keeping the weapons out of the hands of terrorists, those efforts still provide a platform for more serious and actual progress toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Falk:   I would disagree with your argument that the nonproliferation regime is a precondition for moving toward nuclear disarmament. I think the more persuasive understanding reaches just the opposite conclusion. I think if the nonproliferation regime were to breakdown altogether, there would surface here and elsewhere a much more energetic political will to seek nuclear disarmament because only then would the dangers to the nuclear weapon states become sufficiently evident to mobilize a popular anti-nuclear movement that is strong enough to shake the complacency of the nuclear weapons establishment. Ali Mazrui, the eminent Kenyan political scientist, argued in his Reith Lectures on the BBC several decades ago in favor of proliferation to Third World countries, insisting that only then when the weaponry was so dispersed would the Western nuclear weapon states seriously consider getting rid of them. His position provoked much controversy at the time, but it is not such an easy position to dismiss.

       I think we can point to something more recent that moves in a similar direction as did Mazrui. This is the unexpected advocacy by the Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn, Perry group of an abolitionist goal based, in my view, on their sense that the proliferation regime was being eroded in such a serious way as to undermine the advantages previously gained for the United States through possessing, developing, deploying, and threatening the use of nuclear weapons. These mainstream realist heavyweights never showed any kind of moral or legal anxiety about relying on nuclear weapons so long as their retention conferred strategic benefits. Their recent change of heart represents a simple realist recalculation that the world was getting more dangerous for the nuclear weapon states, and it was getting more dangerous because the nonproliferation regime was not working as effectively as it had in earlier decade, and new threats of acquisition and use by non-state, non-deterrable actors or hostile states had surfaced in the post 9/11 world.

Krieger:   My own view of the Kissinger, Shultz, Perry, Nunn commentaries is that their primary concern is with terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and there being no possibility of deterring those extremists with nuclear weapons. Therefore, they’ve begun to talk about abolition as the goal, but they’re still talking in a way that is consistent with how Barack Obama is implementing his policies. They’re talking about the goal of abolition being the top of a mountain, which they can’t even see at this time and needing to get up to the base camp in order to realize where they’re going. I agree with you that the goal clearly has to be abolition, and we can see far enough to know what we need to do. The Kissinger group could see that as well if they were open to it, but they’ve promoted more of a nonproliferation and stabilization agenda. Their greatest concern seems to be that of cheaters; in other words, how do you properly verify reductions and what kind of actions do you have to take to assure that there won’t be a breakout from the agreed upon reductions.

Falk:   Yes, I think you’re right to mention their preoccupation with terrorism, but I think, at least in my reading of their advocacy, that it is in the setting of not being able to be very trusting of the countries that now are nuclear weapon states or might become nuclear weapon states. Their anxiety about terrorism is linked to the failures of the nonproliferation regime to restrict the weaponry to the five permanent members of the Security Council, which I think they were relative comfortable about, although they undoubtedly would have preferred an Anglo-American or Euro-American nuclear oligopoly, assuming that an American monopoly was not in the cards. Experience with Pakistan also prompted some realist rethinking about security in the nuclear age. It was deeply disturbing to settled attitudes of complacency that Pakistan’s leading nuclear physicist and weapons designer, A. Q. Khan, had heavily engaged in black-market activity to sell illicitly nuclear knowledge and technology. Revelations along these lines challenged the conventional wisdom in Washington. This meant that the control system that had been relied upon in previous decades now seemed risky and potentially very dangerous.

       Against such a background it is not surprising that a realist reappraisal made it seem preferable to work toward the elimination of the weaponry even if it turned out to be difficult to go all the way to the top of that mountain. I think that what we’re really talking about, and it is an important issue, is whether strengthening the nonproliferation regime is a contribution toward the goal of nuclear disarmament or it operates as a diversion. I think you are taking more the view that strengthening the nonproliferation is still possible, and hence desirable, and that it may even be a precondition for disarmament. I’m taking the view that the stress on nonproliferation operates mainly as a diversion; that the only likely way to fashion the political will needed to move toward nuclear disarmament, is through a dramatic breakdown of the nonproliferation regime or through some kind of catastrophic use of nuclear weapons. Neither of these “preconditions” is desirable. Quite the opposite, but nothing short of such developments seems capable of shaking the anti-disarmament consensus that pervades the nuclear weapons establishment.

Krieger:   It is the fear of the catastrophic use that motivates the Kissinger group. It is the fear that it is something that could happen, that the probabilities of it happening are increasing, and that no matter how large the US nuclear arsenal remains, it won’t be helpful in preventing the use of nuclear weapons by those who can’t be located or don’t care if they are. They see the kind of rationality that they believed was inherent in nuclear deterrence disintegrating under those conditions. And also, as you mentioned, the instability with regard to Pakistan and the instability in the Middle East create other sets of problems, which would be less dangerous if nuclear weapons weren’t in play. I think they see the threat, but they also see abolition, as President Obama has expressed, as a very long-term project. It seems to me that one of the most important and compelling things we could do as members of civil society concerned with this issue is to find a way to instill in it a greater sense of urgency. And so, the question that you are raising about whether this agreement should be applauded and move on from there or whether it should be exposed as not having gone far enough in the right direction seems to me to be less the question than that of how can the efforts that Obama is making – the vision that he has expressed, the same vision of the Kissinger group and others around the world – be given an appropriate sense of urgency rather than left in the visionary stage while we move only incrementally toward the vision.

Falk:   The only thing that I have trouble with is those last words of yours. I don’t think we are moving incrementally toward the vision. I think we’re moving toward another vision; the vision of a restabilized nuclear weapons security system. I don’t believe at all that arms control is incrementally moving toward a world without nuclear weapons. I think there are two competing visions, not one, and that we each have to make a choice between these visions when it comes to shaping a political project for change. President Obama, I admit, has been ambiguous as to which vision he is really championing. Conceivably, he believes he is championing them both, but I don’t see strong evidence of this, and I see mainly evidence that he is mainly pushing the arms control vision, as you earlier suggested by saying that the main purpose of his Prague speech was to endorse the arms control/nonproliferation vision, not the disarmament vision.

Krieger:   I would actually say it slightly differently. I take the president at his word when he says his vision is a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. His implementation thus far has been expressed as an arms control/nonproliferation agenda. The advisors he is surrounded by must favor such an agenda, and although the Kissinger group has expressed a vision of a world without nuclear weapons, their agenda is also consistent with an arms control/nonproliferation agenda. The question for me is, without rejecting outright what they’ve done, and I don’t think it is to be rejected, how to instill a sense of urgency toward achieving the actual vision that President Obama has expressed. It may be that he doesn’t clearly understand the difference between the incremental steps that he has talked about and that are being implemented in this treaty and the goal that he expresses of a world without nuclear weapons. Clearly, there are things that he could do that aren’t currently on his agenda and maybe aren’t even on his radar that would make a far stronger commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.

Falk:   I think that what you say about his own consciousness in relation to his nuclear weapons agenda is quite plausible, but at the same time I do think that it is of considerable importance to try to draw this distinction sharply between an arms control/nonproliferation security system and a security system dedicated to the elimination of weaponry of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons. I don’t feel that distinction is clearly understood, even by many people, like ourselves, who favor nuclear disarmament, but still feel that these arms control steps are somehow not only consistent with a nuclear disarmament agenda but are incremental steps toward its realization. My view is that the whole record of arms control throughout the Cold War and since, confirmed over the years by my interaction with the people in the Washington defense policy community, especially while I was teaching at Princeton, has convinced me that this still prevailing consensus doesn’t believe that nuclear disarmament is in the national interest and doesn’t think there is a tolerably safe way to manage a nuclear disarmed world so as to be secure against cheating.

       This Washington consensus was expressed probably most clearly years ago by the Harvard policy analyst, Joe Nye, who wrote at length about the irreversibility of a nuclear weapons world – a world in which you can never be sure that others won’t cheat or given that the knowledge needed to make a bomb is out there, then there will always remain the possibility of putting weapons back into existence even if they are or seem to have been all destroyed. I think that this skepticism reflects the continuing majority view of the policy community in this country and probably also in other nuclear weapon states. At the same time, they are prepared to ignore a politician who says that a world without nuclear weapons is desirable as long as the goal is situated well outside the realm of current politics, and Obama has done this by situating clearly his visionary goal beyond the horizon of his own mortality, thereby making the wish seem to be a harmless piety, remote and irrelevant. I don’t want to let the politicians get away with such an ideological maneuver, seeking to mystify the people who are morally, legally and politically deeply troubled by the implications of living in a world with nuclear weapons. I am one such person, committed to making zero a political project and not just a vision!

Krieger:   It is becoming increasingly apparent that nuclear weapons are not necessarily serving the interests of the United States and its citizens, if they ever really did, but are serving rather the interests of a small group of security experts who have developed a whole imaginary world around concepts such as nuclear deterrence; that is, security based on threats of retaliation. It is true that, even at lower numbers of weapons, those individuals still seem to have a lot of influence and power in Washington. That is reflected in the new Nuclear Posture Review. The American people run significant risks by their complacency on this issue. I can appreciate your concern that the US-Russia agreement, which appears to be progress, could result only in a greater level of complacency in thinking that important steps are being taken to improve the security of the country at lower levels of armaments.

       I still find it perplexing as to how to move closer to implementing a nuclear disarmament agenda. I don’t think we’ve had a president who has expressed as clear a vision of a world without nuclear weapons as President Obama has done. I think he is a person who is clearly intelligent enough to understand the continuing risks of living in a world with nuclear weapons, no matter how many of them there are or how many we possess. I don’t think he should be attacked for taking steps that he feels are fulfilling his vision. I wonder how we could be more effective in expressing the kinds of concerns that you’ve articulated about the differences between arms control and disarmament so that they would actually have some possibility of being received in a way that would lead to implementation rather than outright rejection.

Falk:   I think you raised a difficult, appropriate question and it relates back to this issue of how do you achieve some kind of hopeful posture in relation to what is happening? And is it false consciousness to view this START agreement to reduce the number of strategic missiles and launchers – is it false consciousness to express hope rather than skepticism in response, or should one try to blend the two and say that if it is to be viewed as hopeful from the perspective of nuclear disarmament, then one needs to follow this step with a clearer sense of future direction in terms of policy? But if this is coupled with similar kinds of negotiations and no real indication that either the strategy of the country or its capabilities are turning away from relying on these weapons, then I think it becomes important to express a truthful sense of skepticism, not to discredit the motivation of Obama as an individual, but to clarify what the policy of the country seems to be and how this pattern relates to these values and policy objectives.

Krieger:   I think we should give our best assessment of the situation and our best policy advice, but it still begs the question of how we can be more effective in following that path.

Falk:   I think, above all, we need at this time to be truthful about the ambiguity of this step. I think that civil society voices don’t have real resources or governmental power, but they do have the capacity to tell the truth or to express their sincere understanding of an unfolding reality, and if they compromise this true witnessing for a rather vain effort to get a seat at the end of the big table they give away their authenticity as voices of conscience. I feel strongly that the legitimacy of this civil society voice depends upon its moral and legal clarity and its political insight even if it disappoints liberal sentiments. That means that sometimes one has to say things that are not in keeping with a widespread belief that it is important to lend support to a president who is better than his predecessor or possible successor. What should be the guiding motivation here? I agree that it is a little different for someone like myself who is in some ways an independent intellectual academic person and someone like yourself who represents an organization that is involved with efforts to persuade policymakers to take constructive short-term steps. You’re more constrained by those practicalities that shape what seems to be a different conception of responsible behavior. I have license to be irresponsible toward the immediate political process and to ignore the domestic constraints on policy (what the Senate will swallow). Perhaps, as this dialogue may illustrate, it may be that the combination of these two somewhat discordant voices is the best we can do at this stage.

Krieger:   It seems to me that you are right in theory, but I’m not sure how it would play out in practice. I certainly agree with you that we should always speak the truth as we see it and try to find our way through a thicket of obstacles to achieve the goal as best we can – and the goal is a world without nuclear weapons, which I believe is essential for a human future.

       I want to raise a related issue that I think is important. Although we’ve been talking about moving to the strongest position possible for a world free of nuclear weapons, there remain quite a few people in the political sphere of this country that would argue that President Obama has gone too far and would see what he has done as a problem rather than a step in the right direction. You’re approaching it from the other side. But given the general ambiance in the Senate these days, the possibility of ratification of this treaty doesn’t seem high to me. Getting 67 votes in the Senate seems like it would be a stretch. We already know that certain leading Republican senators have said that if there is any mention of curtailing the anti-ballistic missile system that the US is deploying in various places, including Europe, that the treaty won’t get their support in the Senate. This issue, however, is very important to the Russians. They didn’t want to have an agreement that would allow unfettered deployment of US missile defenses. The Obama administration tried to deal with this situation by agreeing to a preambular statement in the treaty that simply said that offensive and defensive missiles have a relationship to each other. A preambular statement carries no legal effect. There will still be some potentially serious difficulties in having this treaty ratified by the Senate. Twenty years ago or so when the START 1 agreement was ratified in the Senate, there was bipartisan support for it. Now it seems doubtful that there is going to be bipartisan support no matter what compromises President Obama is willing to make. You can see in looking at that issue of missile defenses, the kind of narrow path that President Obama needed to walk in order, on the one hand, to reach agreement with the Russians and, on the other hand, to be able to get enough support to have the treaty ratified in the Senate.

Falk:   I don’t disagree with this analysis. I’m only suggesting that if one wants to support the treaty, one should do it without indulging illusions that it is more than it is and not pretend that it should be viewed as a step toward nuclear disarmament. I would take a somewhat agnostic position, myself, thinking that it may or may not be, depending on what happens subsequently; accordingly, we should withhold any expression of either positive or negative judgment about whether this particular treaty, aside from endorsing it from a stabilization perspective, is desirable from the perspective of getting to zero. I believe it is important to clarify that these two paths are in all probability parallel, and not convergent. Further, that at this point the New START treaty and the Nuclear Posture Review seem clearly to have chosen the arms control/nonproliferation path, and shunned the disarmament path. I think we have to clarify those two directions that are available to American security policy. It is my fear that by choosing the arms control/nonproliferation path, whether to overcome domestic political opposition or to mollify the nuclear weapons establishment, the visionary rhetoric, while inspiring, is also somewhat misleading to the extent it suggests that the disarmament path is also being seriously embarked upon.

Krieger:   Of course, many people would disagree with the proposition that you’ve just put forward that arms control and disarmament are divergent paths and would say that the path of arms control leads ultimately to disarmament. You are making a clear statement that you don’t agree with that perspective.

Falk:   Not exactly. I go further by saying that to the extent that arms control succeeds, it weakens the pressure supportive of disarmament, making zero less attainable than ever. It is only when there is instability that people feel that there is a need for disarmament, and as long as the regime seems stable, and especially if it seems to keep the weaponry away from those that we don’t like, our adversaries in the world, our leadership will not alter the status quo. It is only by subverting the ideological and bureaucratic status quo that it may become possible to raise the level of societal receptivity to the disarmament alternative sufficiently to make it a political option. It should be recalled that the moments in the past when public support for nuclear disarmament was greatest coincided with those times when Cold War confrontations brought public fears of nuclear war to the surface, provoking widespread anxieties.

Krieger:   That proposition may not be correct because often it is instability that leads to a retrenchment and more armaments, to a restarting of an arms race. If we can’t develop a program to achieve the goal of nuclear disarmament under conditions of relative stability, it seems like we may be not moving up the mountain to a base camp, but trying to instead to roll the Sisyphean boulder up the mountain to achieve nuclear disarmament under unstable conditions.

Falk:   That it is one of these confusing situations where the evidence is not conclusive for these alternative points of view, and my own skepticism about arms control initiatives really is something that evolved in my thinking over a long period of time, enduring many disappointments, watching from the sidelines what seemed to be the real goals of the arms control community and witnessing their antipathy toward nuclear disarmament, which extended far beyond a belief that one needs to go slowly and carefully toward nuclear disarmament. I think there are two possible ways of thinking. Those that are very optimistic about arms control have always said what I think you are saying, that these are incremental steps that eventually make the world secure enough to consider nuclear disarmament. The contrasting view that I’m espousing suggests that the arms control and security policy community is fundamentally hostile to nuclear disarmament, and its influential advocates view the arms control/nonproliferation goals as ends in themselves that should not be undermined by sentimental and essentially wrong-headed commitments to a disarmament program.

Krieger:   You are referring to an approach to arms control that confers relative advantage.

Falk:   It is also prudent with respect to their assessment of comparative risks. They want to cut risks and costs, and arms control is a sustainable way of managing the nuclear weapons arsenal. It does not necessarily mean that you get the better of the deal in relation to adversaries, though you may, and this is certainly an aim of arms control negotiations. The main thing is that it is helpful to have an appropriate regulatory framework, but from an arms control perspective it is also important to discredit what is deemed to be dangerous—namely, the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons in real time, rather than as an “ultimate” but politically irrelevant goal. My own effort for many years is to challenge this view, and insist that the elimination of nuclear weapons is a practical and desirable political undertaking, and anything less than this represents complicity with the most immoral and unlawful weaponry ever introduced into the domain of world politics.

Krieger:   I think that the arms control perspective that you are referring to comes out of an identification with national security experts who have largely defined US nuclear policy over the past 65 years. It often comes out of a military framework, so a security/military orientation guides that perspective. I agree that there is a managerial element to arms control and nonproliferation, but also one that confers upon these so-called national security experts a sense of dominance in our social structure.

Falk:   It is part of what Eisenhower was thinking about when he warned about the military-industrial complex. It is sustained also by a policy community —think tanks, academic specialists, and journalists — that appear to have been socialized into this managerial and strategic mindset that is essentially antithetical to a normative or ethical/legal vision of security systems, and basically doesn’t regard a concern about indiscriminate warfare or the massive killing of civilians as relevant to the framing of security policy for the United States. The discourse that has realist credibility considers comparative levels of weaponry, of missions that may or may not be successfully performed by different types of nuclear weapons. But over the years these are the concerns that have defined the outer limits of responsible policy discourse. If you try to address the issues outside those limits, the gatekeepers in Washington will do their best to exclude you from the discourse, and they usually do their job very well. As far as I know, none of the people in Washington prominent in the arms control agency or in the national security council hold views that are compatible with the outlook of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Krieger:   I noticed in some comments on this New START agreement that Secretary of Defense Gates made a point of saying the reductions are numbers that the defense community, the national security experts, believe can be achieved without any impact on US national security, and that these numbers are reflected in the Nuclear Posture Review. He also said in his comments on this treaty that it will be necessary to strengthen the nuclear weapons infrastructure at the nuclear weapons laboratories and that would, of course, require a budget allocation. They are already talking about a $5 billion increase for the weapons labs over the next five years. I also noticed that the third opinion piece by the Kissinger group, which came out this year, called for similar budget increases in the nuclear weapons infrastructure. This group of insiders that have dominated national security policy are looking for some commensurate gain to be obtained with the reduction of nuclear weapons. They may be seeking to take the numbers down, but to also make the nuclear weapons arsenal, in their words, “safe, secure and reliable.” That will cost more money and will require strengthening the infrastructure at the nuclear weapons laboratories. This will reinforce the US commitment, in the eyes of the world, to greater reliance on nuclear weapons. It will be viewed as a step away from nuclear disarmament.

Falk:    What are your thoughts on the Nuclear Security Summit that President Obama convened in April 2010? Do you believe it can be effective in keeping nuclear weapons and the materials to make them out of the hands of terrorists?

Krieger:   The Nuclear Security Summit is a good idea, an important and necessary one, but I fear it will not be sufficient. Nuclear terrorism is only one strand of the problem. There are also regional nuclear issues that drive arms races, such as the failure to create Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones in the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Israel’s nuclear weapons, which are not publicly discussed, are highly provocative in the Middle East. And, as yet, the international community has been unsuccessful in negotiating an agreement with the North Koreans to give up their nuclear arms and return to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

       There is also the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, which remains unstable. In addition, there is the US insistence on moving forward with deployment of missile defenses, space weaponization and projects such as replacing nuclear warheads with conventional warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles, creating a Global Strike Force. Such steps will slow down, if not halt altogether, further progress on nuclear disarmament between the US and Russia. We need to lock down all nuclear materials for weapons, but the global trend in spreading nuclear power plants will make this extremely difficult. If we make plutonium a valued element of international commerce, it will increase the possibilities of terrorists gaining access to it for bombs. I doubt if, in the long run, the world can both support a resurgence of nuclear power and prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons. I support President Obama’s efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, but I believe it will require a far more urgent effort to achieve nuclear weapons abolition as well as severe constraints on the spread of nuclear power plants, leading to phasing them out.

Falk:   I would only add that I would have found the Nuclear Security Summit more in keeping with even slim hopes for a world without nuclear weapons if the approach to threats associated with terrorists acquiring such weaponry was assessed from the dual perspectives of nonproliferation and various forms of denuclearization, including Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, No First Use commitments and the formation of an international working group tasked with exploring whether plans for phased and verified nuclear disarmament can be drawn up within 12 months. Until denuclearization is discussed alongside nonproliferation, I will remain mainly critical of what is being done about the various dangers associated with the retention of nuclear weapons. I classify myself as among those who regard it as totally unacceptable to base security on threats of mass annihilation, a condition that creates a moral urgency and legal imperative to make nuclear disarmament a goal of present policy; and until this is done by our leaders, I will not be content with the steps taken.

Krieger:   It must be kept in mind that the steps are only steps. It is too soon to know where they will lead. We may look back to see that these steps were far too little, too late; or we may look back to see that these steps stemmed the tide and were a meaningful turning point on the path to a nuclear weapon-free world. It seems certain that where these steps will lead will depend not only on the steps themselves and President Obama’s vision, but on the support and engagement of broad masses of people who are committed to ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. Awakening our fellow citizens of the planet, raising their awareness and encouraging their engagement on this project is the key to achieving the world we both seek – a world at peace free of nuclear weapons, one that spends its resources not on war and its preparation, but on meeting human needs for all and protecting the Earth and its resources for future generations.

April 27, 2010
President Obama and a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

A dialogue between David Krieger and Richard Falk

Krieger:      The last time that we got together to discuss nuclear weapons issues we were still in the final year of the Bush administration. Our dialogue focused on being at the nuclear precipice. We were reflecting on whether we were headed toward catastrophe or transformation. Now the Bush administration has left office, and been replaced by the Obama administration. President Obama has made a number of statements that reflect a different tone and a different set of objectives than were being pursued by the Bush administration. The question that I’d like to explore with you today is this: How seriously should we take the changes that are being proposed by the Obama administration? Do you see these proposals as a serious turning away from catastrophe toward transformation?

Falk:           I think that this is a much more hopeful time to consider these various issues bearing on nuclear weapons and, at the same time, it’s a rather confusing and complicated time. Of course it’s appropriate and accurate, I think, to welcome the kind of rhetorical leadership that President Obama has so far exhibited, particularly in his Prague speech of April 5th. One has to hope that this is more than a rhetorical posture, but represents, as he said in the speech it did, a serious commitment to take concrete steps toward the objective of a world free from nuclear weapons. But one has to look at two other factors here that make me, at any rate, somewhat less optimistic about the real tangible results.         The first is the continuing confrontation with Iran as a potential nuclear weapon state on the unspoken assumption that we still will be living in a world where some countries are allowed to have those weapons and others are forbidden. It would be a very different confrontation, from my perspective, if it was coupled with a call for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons altogether or a dual call to Israel and Iran that would take account of the existence of a nuclear weapon state in the region already. But as far as I can tell there is no disposition to do that.
A second concern, it seems to me, is the degree to which the bureaucratic roots of the nuclear weapons establishment are still very deep in the governmental structure and very dedicated, as near as I can tell, to pursuing a path that has some of President Obama’s rhetoric, but really aims at managing and stabilizing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the world and, particularly, the US arsenal. This would, in that sense, maintain this geopolitical structure of a world where some have the weapons and supposedly the great danger comes from the countries that don’t have the weapons. I find that an untenable and basically unacceptable conception of world order in relation to this challenge posed by the continued existence of nuclear weaponry.

Krieger:      You raise important concerns, and I think we should explore these. I’ve just returned from the 2009 Preparatory Committee Meeting for the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. One of the things that I took note of there was that many of the countries in the Middle East were drawing attention to the fact that when the Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995, at the same time there was a pledge on the part of all the parties to the NPT to work for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone. And these countries in the Middle East are now saying that in their view the indefinite extension of the treaty was contingent upon fulfilling the other promises that were made at the time, including a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone. So I think that issue is going to have more and more salience because there are another dozen or so countries in the region that now want to pursue nuclear energy programs in their countries and are making reference to Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for them to get assistance in doing so. With regard to nuclear weapons, the Middle East remains one of the more unsettled regions of the world.
I agree with you that it’s a significant problem that the United States and other leading countries in the world don’t make reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons, while at the same time trying to shut down Iran’s program. One way of interpreting what is going on with the new administration, with President Obama, is that he is saying the right things rhetorically to give the impression that the United States seeks a world free of nuclear weapons, but he is not yet prepared—and it’s a big yet—to make the difficult decisions that involve treating those we see as friends or potential foes with a single standard rather than a double standard. It is clear that if nonproliferation is an objective of the administration, it will not be obtained without doing away with double standards on the one hand and showing by action that the United States and other nuclear weapons states are serious about fulfilling their Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article VI obligations of actually moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world within a reasonable timeframe.

Falk:           That is all very persuasive, but even in the Prague speech there’s no hint of concern about this double standards problem as I read the speech. At a time when the new prime minister of Israel is visiting the United States and there is a discussion of the future of the relationship between our two countries, they talk about Iran and they talk about the Palestinians, but there’s no willingness to raise the question of the regional nuclear weapons-free zone. Nor is there pressure for Israel to do something about its nuclear weapons arsenal if it expects the United States to exert pressure on Iran to forego that option. And from the point of view of the region, it’s perfectly tenable to view Israel as a greater threat than Iran. Israel has attacked its neighbors on a few occasions, it has kept these weapons, it has even put them at the ready apparently in the 1973 war, and yet it’s been given a kind of silent pass as far as retaining its nuclear weapons arsenal. So it’s an important issue and I believe that it’s our role in civil society to raise those uncomfortable issues that Congress is obviously unwilling to raise, the media is not very willing to discuss, much less press the issue of double standards or Israel’s exemption from scrutiny with respect to nuclear weaponry. Unless independent voices in civil society raise these issues effectively they won’t be raised at all in my opinion.

Krieger:      I agree with that. The question is: Should we be pushing for President Obama to call for a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East and for Israel to be a party to that zone? Is that where our efforts should be focused, or should they be focused on taking some large steps, such as negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Moscow? The United States and Russia have most of the nuclear weapons in the world, so that is where a good deal of progress could be made at this moment. Other issues have been stalled for the eight years of the Bush administration, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, gaining control of loose nuclear materials, and dealing with the potential threat posed by nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non-state extremists. There is space at this time for considerable progress on those issues before moving to some of the tougher issues. I would put a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone into that tougher issue category, and a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone as well, dealing with concerns in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and China. There are many practical questions, such as which issues should we be focusing on now, which ones can come later, as we actually move towards zero? There seems to be some momentum now, at least in comparison to what we’ve had for the Bush years and largely for the Clinton years as well.

Falk:           Yes, I think certainly there is a case to be made in favor of moving forward on these avenues of arms reduction and stabilization that have been blocked over a period when the conservatives controlled security policy for the US. But I’m convinced that unless the difficult issues are raised alongside these other issues, they will never be raised, and there is, I think, a quite serious urgency in the Middle East, to some extent in the Indo-Pakistan region, central and south Asia, as well as in the Korean peninsula that you referred to. And maybe one perspective to bring into the debate about next steps is to talk about these kinds of regional conflict zones, because they pose immediate problems that could lead to serious deterioration. There is the possibility that Pakistan could come under the control of very extremist leadership and that India would be very nervous by such a development, and one could have the first war between nuclear weapon states easily taking place. So I’m not convinced myself that these general denuclearizing steps should be privileged at this early stage of the Obama presidency. I think they should certainly be supported, but to allow them to dominate the political agenda at this stage is, in my view, a tactical as well as a strategic mistake.

Krieger:      In the Prague speech, President Obama talked about the importance of moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons, but he didn’t really indicate that it was something that needed to be done with a sense of urgency. He said something to this effect: “I’m not naïve; this may take a long time. It may not happen within my lifetime.” Surely there is cause for concern in that lack of urgency because it’s a deferral of the end state until some time in a future that can’t yet be foreseen. And that’s a similar point of view to what former officials like Kissinger, Shultz, Perry, Nunn and others are also articulating. They think that a world free of nuclear weapons would be a good thing, but they can’t see “the top of the mountain,” as they put it.

Falk:           I disagree with you a little bit there. I think there is a difference between the visionary approach embodied in Obama’s Prague speech and the very realist assessment of the status of nuclear weapons in the Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn statements. In their case, ironically, they see getting rid of nuclear weapons as a strategic benefit to the United States at this stage. They’re worried about the spread of nuclear weapons, which they don’t think can be contained by the present nonproliferation regime, and they further believe that any further proliferation will neutralize whatever benefits nuclear weapons have had up to this point in serving American security interests since the end of World War II. Kissinger initially made his career as a policy advisor on the basis of advocating the reliance on US military superiority when it comes to nuclear weapons in confronting the Soviet Union, even endorsing the Cold War idea of ‘limited nuclear war.’ I believe Kissinger hasn’t changed his worldview; he just sees, and I think probably correctly from a realist point of view, that the US military dominance would be less inhibited in a world without nuclear weapons.

Krieger:      And the United States would be less threatened in a world without nuclear weapons because of the power imbalance that nuclear weapons make possible?

Falk:           Yes.

Krieger:      I agree with you that they’re looking at nuclear disarmament from a realist point of view, and I think their greatest concern is that nuclear weapons could end up in the hands of extremist groups, which could lead to the destruction of United States’ cities, inflicting serious harm on the country.

Falk:           They’re also concerned about proliferation because they don’t want to see a lot of other countries having these nuclear weapons because then it would likely make the United States much more cautious in pursuing its overseas interests, especially when these involve military intervention. So it’s partly vulnerability, but it’s also partly military asymmetry that favors the United States that is at risk if further proliferation takes place.

Krieger:      But nonetheless, I don’t see that they have articulated or even suggested that this is something that can be done relatively quickly. Mayors for Peace have an agenda that calls for a nuclear weapons-free world by the year 2020. The Kissinger group only talks, at this point, about building a base camp to get to the top of the mountain. It has not talked about achieving the goal by a certain time, or even delving into that to look at what might be needed. Two things are needed if there is going to be a serious attempt to go from where we are now to zero nuclear weapons—whether driven by the former officials’ view of the world or by President Obama’s view of the world. The two things that are needed are: first, political will to go beyond a rhetorical commitment to actual action; and second, US leadership. Without US leadership the project is going to be stalled. If the US doesn’t lead, Russia won’t be particularly inclined to change its reliance on nuclear weapons more than it is being forced to do by economics, and other states won’t be pressed to move in that direction. So, I see the real starting point is the United States now moving from the rhetoric that Obama has put on the table to the actual steps that will move us closer to a nuclear weapons-free world, not only in numbers of weapons but in how we treat the weapons, how we view them in our strategic outlook, and how much we rely upon them militarily.

Falk:           Yes, I think those are certainly good ways of assessing the motivations associated with whatever steps are advocated by the United States in its natural position of leadership. I am a little bit less convinced that the US has this special vocation of providing the leadership. The most successful setting for real momentum toward the goal of elimination would be for mutually reinforcing developments to occur in the other nuclear weapon states, because that would both create a kind of encouragement here as well as not make others suspicious that this was a kind of US tactical, Kissinger-like move to shift the pieces on the global chess board so as to give the US a tighter grip on world politics. So I would put a lot of emphasis on engaging the other nuclear weapon states in a more global process of denuclearization. I think it would be very good, for instance, to have speeches by other leaders that responded in some way to the Obama Prague speech, and to have civil society alerted and mobilized to a much greater extent than it is at present in these other countries to see this as a moment of opportunity—stark opportunity. I think as long as the climate in civil society is as passive as I believe it still remains, even here, there will not be much significant progress toward zero. There will be some progress toward stabilization and management and reducing the risks of unintended use of nuclear weapons or perhaps making them more secure in relation to non-state actors and other essentially managerial initiatives.
I believe quite strongly that without a movement from below there will be no challenge to the nuclear weapons establishment that is well situated in the governmental structure that operates from above. I think President Obama’s political style is very much one of responding to pressure and not being willing to take big political risks to get out ahead of what he regards as the relation of forces within society. I think he’s shown that in everything he’s done so far, including his appointments to important positions, the way he has handled the economic crisis, the way he has handled the Palestine-Israel conflict. In all these areas he’s taken a very low-risk, low-profile strategy except rhetorically.

Krieger:      So that leaves us with an important question: Whether it’s possible to generate such a citizen movement around this issue? Of course, that’s the reason for being of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and we’ve struggled with generating such a movement for 27 years and continue to struggle with it. I sense that Obama’s rhetoric has made our job somewhat easier because it has alerted people to the possibility that there may be some hope. I think the years of Bush and to a lesser extent also Clinton before him, were on the side of the scale that tipped toward despair. When you tip toward despair of change, it’s very difficult to engage people in action. So now, with Obama, because of his rhetoric, we have a better chance to build a movement from below. But, as you know, it’s a difficult challenge to get people to directly confront nuclear issues and believe that they can have an effective voice in those issues. Even for civil society groups, like ours, that have been engaged for nearly three decades, it’s not so easy to believe that we can have a strong influence on policy, partly for the reasons you mentioned earlier having to do with the entrenched bureaucracy that surrounds this issue and seeks to maintain at least some level of superiority, if not dominance, with regard to maintaining the weapons.

Falk:           Yes, I think it is difficult, but unless that difficulty is overcome I think we have to guard ourselves against an orgy of wishful thinking because over this kind of issue it’s very difficult to achieve meaningful change unless there is a sufficiently altered climate of opinion in the society. Some of that has occurred, as you point out, but I think there’s a long way to go. It’s not an issue that currently is very high on the public’s agenda. There are other concerns that seem more immediate, and pressing, and in the past when the nuclear issue has become briefly prominent, the prominence has resulted from fear rather than hope. I don’t know how strong a political pillar hope is as the basis of change. I’m not sure about fear either, which evinces concern but not often any transformative actions. When one considers where and when change does occur and where and when it does not occur, it seems to me to be very dependent on some kind of significant mobilization of civil society that exerts pressure on the government and alters the way in which political officials in positions of responsibility understand and interpret these kinds of issues, and how they weigh the political consequences of their various policy options.

Krieger:      Ordinary people need to understand that this is an issue of self-interest for them to push forward. But the complexities of the issue are such that it’s very hard for ordinary citizens of the United States, and I’m sure of other countries, to make informed decisions about what’s in their interest regarding nuclear weapons. There are important psychological issues at play. One, and this is long-standing, is a mistaken sense that nuclear weapons actually protect people. This idea has been sold by the nuclear weapons bureaucracy fairly well, so that people really have to stop and think to grasp that these weapons don’t protect them. In fact, nuclear weapons make them and their families vulnerable to a counterattack if they happen to live in a country that has these weapons. The other side of that coin is that when somebody like Obama comes along and says that he wants to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and it’s profoundly in American’s interest and the world’s interest to do so, the people who already have the glimmer of understanding that nuclear weapons aren’t in their interest are immediately mollified. They have the sense that the problem is now taken care of because the president tells us that he sees the problem and he is going to do something about it. They think that we can check that problem off and move on to more immediate and pressing problems having to do with the economy, health care, and other issues that are more tangible.

Falk:           Yes, I think that’s a good way of describing the challenge and difficulty, and I think those of us that are involved in trying to make this rhetorical moment into a real political project are ourselves challenged to figure out what is the best way to do that. How do we take this rhetorical moment given to us by President Obama and in a different way by the Kissinger group, how do we make this into something that is more than rhetoric, that becomes a political project that envisions a real process that ends with the elimination of nuclear weapons? There’s no plausible reason that I understand why, if the project is meaningful at all, it needs to be treated as something that can only happen in the distant future. If it can happen at all, it can happen in a meaningful chronology that is well within the dimensions of a human generation, which allows for reliable verification of a disarming process, for confidence to be built and trust to be established, and for international institutions of inspection and verification to gain respect and experience. One way of testing the seriousness of the commitment to zero is to find, to concretize the process by which one moves from where we are to where we would like to be. As long as zero nuclear weapons remain purely an abstract goal, I’m very suspicious about the contribution of small steps taken to this goal, even if these steps are not so small from a stabilization perspective. Unless there is an influential roadmap to zero that has been adopted by political leaders and known to the public, I don’t believe these steps are likely to lead us toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Krieger:      I think a roadmap is a litmus test of whether a country is serious. If you say you want a world with no nuclear weapons, the logical next step is to figure out how we get from here to there. That’s been done by civil society groups. They’ve worked out a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty similar to the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons. I recently created a roadmap to satisfy my own curiosity about timeframes, and I think that a generous timeframe at the outer end would be somewhere around 17 years or perhaps 20 years. But, at the same time, with the proper political will and leadership, the elimination of nuclear weapons could be accomplished in a 10-year timeframe with far lower risks of cheating than currently exist. If there was a serious desire to move to zero nuclear weapons that was driven by an understanding that the people of any nation would be more secure in such a world, then I think it could happen relatively quickly. There would be adjustments that would be necessary, and it would open up a lot of discussion about changes in the international system so that some countries wouldn’t end up being bullied by those countries with the strongest conventional power. But you would end up, at a minimum, with an international system in which nuclear weapons would not continue to threaten the destruction of civilization, if not the species, and that seems like an intelligent starting point for moving this project forward.

Falk:           Yes, I think it is. It still raises the question of where an organization like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation should put its major emphasis: Whether it should be primarily developing a framework and support for the process of total nuclear disarmament, or it should be reinforcing and encouraging the support for the initial steps in a denuclearizing process that would hopefully build some sense of momentum that would carry forward beyond that? I feel that one needs some rather clear benchmarks that would give the Obama presidency both a kind of test of whether the goal of zero is merely rhetorical, or whether it was something that they are willing to fight for politically. That’s why I would put stress both on the roadmap as something to be endorsed and look toward an early and largely symbolic renunciation by the United States of discretion to use these weapons as instruments of statecraft. That’s why I feel the No First Use declaration by the U.S. would be an extremely significant affirmation of the claim that Obama is pursuing nuclear disarmament as well as reviving nuclear arms control. I think such a pledge would also encourage other nuclear weapon states to join us—if the US has made a firm commitment to not use these weapons as instruments of statecraft, but temporarily retained only as instruments kept available for ultimate survival purposes until the end point of a roadmap is achieved.

Krieger:      For the United States to commit publicly to limiting the use of its nuclear weapons under any circumstances to retaliation for a nuclear attack, that it was adopting a No First Use policy, would be a major step forward in demonstrating actual leadership toward diminishing the military importance of nuclear weapons. Once there’s been sufficient diminishment of the importance of the weapons in any country’s military doctrine, then it would seem to me that the next steps toward actual abolition would be much easier to take. China currently has a No First Use policy and it actually backs up that policy by not keeping its warheads attached to its delivery vehicles. It would have to put them together in order to use them. It has a declaratory policy that it will not under any circumstances use nuclear weapons first. India has made a statement similar to that. So, two of the nine nuclear weapon states have already taken this position. At one point, the former Soviet Union had that position as well, but when the United States refused to adopt that position and as the Soviet Union was losing conventional military power, it withdrew its No First Use pledge. It would be a significant area for leadership by the Obama administration to join China and India, and make a declaration of No First Use and urge others under our influence—which would include Britain, France, Israel and Pakistan—to adopt similar positions. I think that would be a landmark step from which a roadmap would certainly follow.

Falk:           But you have to ask the question, because it seems so persuasive, why hasn’t it been proposed? It’s a no-brainer from a moral, legal, and political perspective to insist that if you are genuinely dedicated to a world without nuclear weapons such a step should be taken. It also follows from the 1996 International Court of Justice advisory opinion. It follows from any kind of moral calculus of the role of nuclear weapons, recollecting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, giving a sense of what it means humanly to use these weapons, and even to contemplate and plan for their use. So the refusal and the failure to move toward such a declaration has to raise questions about whether this whole rhetoric that President Obama has deployed, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is really a blueprint for stabilizing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the world so as to avoid accidental and unintentional use or the diversion of these weapons to non-state actors. These may be, no doubt are, desirable goals, but they should not be confused with a project to get rid of the weapons altogether. Until we have more indication from the Obama administration that their substantive commitments go beyond arms control, we should mount pressure to reinforce our enthusiasm for his visionary rhetoric.

Krieger:      Another possibility is that President Obama doesn’t necessarily understand the implications of a first use policy. That may be an area he hasn’t considered to any serious extent because the issue of No First Use hasn’t come up in any of his statements. His administration has been more focused on bilateral engagement with Russia, strengthening the Non-Proliferation Treaty, gathering up loose nuclear materials, and preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. But it seems to me within the realm of possibility that even an intelligent individual like President Obama hasn’t given serious consideration to what it means to have a policy that allows for first use. I think he may understand that a policy that allows for preemptive use is a bad policy, but I wonder whether he fully understands the implications of a first use policy.

Falk:           If this is a matter of oversight or ignorance, then it provides a good reason for anti-nuclear activists to convey a deeper understanding to the society as a whole and hopefully to the leadership in Washington. As I say, I think it’s a very good litmus test of what the real intentions are behind the advocacy of this new approach to nuclear weapons. The embrace of a No First Use posture would be, it seems to me, a very specific departure from past American policy on nuclear weapons, and it would be a very powerful signal to other nuclear weapon states the US doesn’t intend any longer to base its military planning on a nuclear weapons dimension. Until that is done, there is an inevitable ambiguity as to what the US is up to in trying to prevent its adversaries from getting these weapons, while sheltering its friends from criticism about possessing them and continuing to develop them. What does it mean to enter a positive relationship with India on nuclear technology, which seemingly rewards the country for becoming a nuclear weapon state in defiance of nonproliferation goals? Such developments confirm that, as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, geopolitics is alive and well, and as long as it is alive and well, I don’t think there’s been a real break or rupture with past American approaches to its nuclear weapons agenda, and if this is the case, then it is time for vigilance and criticism, not cheerleading.

Krieger:      Most of what you refer to and particularly the US-India agreement, for the United States to supply nuclear materials and technology to a known proliferator of nuclear weapons, occurred primarily under the Bush administration. So it’s too soon to tell whether that’s a policy that President Obama intends to follow.
I think we agree that a No First Use policy would be a strong signal to the world that the United States is serious about moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world. I think that we also agree that another signal would be for the United States to end its silence about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and to be more proactive about a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.

Falk:           A third point that I think is important is the serious commitment, either in collaboration with other governments or on our own, to develop a roadmap that sketched in a process that leads toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Krieger:      I was just moving to that. One of the actions that President Obama called for in his Prague speech was a Global Summit on Nuclear Security. When he called for that global summit, what he was saying was in essence that we want to prevent nuclear terrorism. If this Global Summit on Nuclear Security could be broadened, it could be a really valuable project. The United States has the convening power to bring together the nations of the world that would be needed, including the nine nuclear weapons states, for such a global summit. These states could actually look at the security issues related to nuclear weapons in all their dimensions, including the dimension of the existing nuclear weapons in the hands of the nine nuclear weapons states, and the potential for accidents, proliferation, and all of the other security issues that nuclear weapons pose. It could include nuclear policy issues, such as No First Use. It seems to me that if the Global Summit on Nuclear Security were broadened, that could actually be the place to initiate a joint effort at developing a roadmap on the way to a new treaty that would lead, with the appropriate confidence-building measures and assurances against cheating, to the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

Falk:           I suspect that there will be a lot of pressure to keep the global summit narrowly focused on the terrorist issue, making the argument that if the focus is diluted nothing will come out of the summit.
                              I think it’s important to bring into the discussion the role of the UN system and possibly regional groupings of states, as well as to look at what groups in civil society can do in relation to their own governments. One of the important achievements in the latter stages of the Cold War was the transnational peace movement in Europe, which had a very strong, positive effect on opposition politics in Eastern Europe and created a kind of collaboration that was often described as détente from below. A public climate of opposition was built through the mobilization of civil society that created a context able to take advantage of other opportunities for fundamental change. The most notable of these opportunities was presented by the new style of leadership in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. Important changes that were completely unanticipated began to take place. One has to try to think through the conditions under which a movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons can take shape and reinforce this kind of rhetorical initiative that President Obama has inserted into the whole dialogue on the role of nuclear weapons.

Krieger:      His rhetoric provides a point of focus for civil society, a point of focus that wasn’t there previously. The question I’m wrestling with is this: How can we make use of that point of focus, how can we take it as a serious commitment on his part and enlist civil society to stand up and support it with a strong enough voice that, even if it was more rhetoric than intention on the part of the administration, they won’t be able to back away from the expectations that they’ve engendered? But, still, we’re faced with questions of how do we more effectively encourage more people to engage in this issue: How do we awaken people to the importance of the issue and the need to engage? I think already at some basic level most people would agree that we would be better off in a world without nuclear weapons. Then the question is: How do we get those people to engage in doing something about that and not simply defering to leaders taking it in their own direction at their own pace? That would require a very proactive citizenry and a democracy that was really working. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was formed on the basis that democracy can work and, at its best, does work, and that people do awaken to issues of importance to themselves and don’t always act against their interests, but can find a way to act in their interests. I think our job continues to be to point out to more and more people and to create more and more enthusiasm for the idea that a world free of nuclear weapons is in the common interest of all Americans and all people of the world.

Falk:           Yes, I completely agree, but we have to acknowledge that the place where democracy seems to be least effective is in relation to the national security agenda, and that ineffectiveness has been reinforced now for by decades of an essentially militarist state having emerged out of first World War II and then the long decades of the Cold War and intensified after 9/11. In all these situations, what one has observed is a continuity of a governmental structure that is organized around the primacy of using military power in the world. Eisenhower, of course warned long ago, about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address, but that’s almost 50 years ago and we now spend as much as the whole world put together on our military budget. It’s an extraordinary thing. I mean Defense Secretary Gates was quoted recently as saying that the American navy is stronger than the navies of the next 13 powers in the world, but despite this disparity we must still make it even stronger. One needs to understand that a leader like Obama is faced with that enormous antidemocratic, militarized, bureaucratic structure and that he would probably receive a vicious backlash from this military establishment if he makes clear that his advocacy in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons is intended to become a real political project. At the same time, such a move would be very, very reinforcing for his leadership and for US leadership, but it would almost certainly involve a fierce struggle with the national security bureaucracy and its links to the media and to certain think tanks and so on. I think this entrenched militarism is a formidable obstacle astride the path to a nuclear free world. It’s not so much just that the public is ill-informed; it is a matter of a hidden, unaccountable power structure that does not want to make basic changes. Incremental changes are acceptable, but seeking basic cha`nges invariably arouses formidable bureaucratic resistance.

Krieger:      We’ve seen some examples of that in the aftermath of Obama’s Prague speech. There have been a number of opinion pieces that have taken the position that Obama is engaging in a fantasy, that his thoughts on a nuclear weapons-free world are an illusion, that there’s no possibility of achieving such a world, and that we should get back to reality as they see it. Their reality is based on the premises that we’re the dominant military power, we’ll continue to be so, and nuclear weapons are essential to that dominance. However, Obama’s rhetoric and his Prague speech seemed to be popular with a majority of Americans, if not with that bureaucratic elite. To succeed, what Obama probably needs to do is to enlist elements of the military in support of his position. That seems possible to me. Without knowing the players specifically, it seems to me that a military leader, as opposed to a civilian bureaucrat, would be less likely to think that nuclear weapons are useful as a matter of national defense to the United States.

Falk:           Yes, I hope so. We’ll have to wait and see whether this issue is sufficiently alive on his policy agenda to elicit this sort of more constructive response and to what degree he follows up on the Prague rhetoric with a renewal of that kind of rhetoric, and gives evidence of a serious intention to move toward implementation. We need to recall that there have been past well-intentioned attempts by American leaders to talk about getting rid of nuclear weapons in a serious way. Jimmy Carter did it at his Notre Dame speech. Very early in his presidency he said he would work every day of his administration to get rid of nuclear weapons, but the backlash from the national security establishment was so strong that he dropped the issue altogether, and even moved in the opposite direction by issuing Presidential Directive 59, a thinly disguised threat to use nuclear weapons if provoked by the Soviet Union in the Middle East. Of course, this was during the Cold War. And then Reagan, even Reagan, had the backlash experience after Reykjavik where he and Gorbachev seemed to have come very close to an agreement on getting rid entirely of strategic nuclear weapons. As soon as he returned to Washington he was savagely attacked as naïve about the role of nuclear weapons and their importance for national interests by bipartisan circles. So we have to see first, whether zero nuclear weapons is a policy priority and second, whether the assured backlash from places like The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere will be sufficiently intimidating. Perhaps even then Obama would not explicitly abandon the disarming goal, but would likely signal an intention not to challenge any further the nuclear weapons establishment.

Krieger:      Another signal may be what comes out of the US-Russia negotiations that have begun. The last agreement that Bush made in 2002, which is still being implemented, is to reduce the deployed strategic arsenals on both the US and Russian sides to between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear weapons each. Under the Bush agreement with Putin, the strategic weapons that are taken off deployed status can either be put in storage – the core can be placed in storage – or they can be dismantled and destroyed. There’s no limit to the number of weapons that can be kept in reserve. The Bush-Putin treaty only dealt with deployed strategic weapons, so there’s no limit to the number that can be kept in reserve. Right now the US does have, as does Russia, a number of weapons awaiting dismantlement, but they also have a number of other weapons that are considered strategic reserve weapons. How to count remains an issue. Should there be one overall number—strategic, tactical and reserve—or should there be several numbers? Under the Bush plan, there was one upper limit specified (2,200), but only for deployed strategic weapons. Other numbers, for the overall arsenal, for instance, were unspecified and unknown. They were not subject to accounting. I think there should be one number of nuclear weapons, and it should be the same formula for each country. It should include reserves and deployed weapons.

Falk:           That seems to me essential to the credibility of any kind of disarming process in relation to other nuclear weapon states.

Krieger:      We don’t yet know how the new negotiations will handle the number, and we also don’t know if they’ll actually make any significant reduction below the current level that has been agreed to. There have been a number of people who have suggested that going down to 1,000 or less would be a good next step, but the numbers that I’ve heard referred to in relation to the Obama administration are around 1,500, which would be a rather minimal incremental step downward. I’m not sure how much emphasis to put on that kind of incrementalism, or even on the number itself, when in the bigger picture it is not the number that is critical as much as it is the demonstration of political will to achieve zero. At the same time, if it turns out that it’s not a very significant reduction, I think that may be a warning sign that the bureaucrats working on stabilization and wanting to continue American nuclear dominance are in more control than perhaps Obama is.

Falk:           That’s always a question as to how much leadership is possible in the national security domain of policy because of the strength of the permanent bureaucracy—its nonaccountability and its links to influential media. That’s why I feel it is so important to have this counter pressure mounted by a mobilized civil society to the extent possible. The question is whether it is possible to mobilize civil society around this kind of issue in the absence of existential fear of the sort that existed from time to time in the Cold War. When the American or European public became very scared about the prospect of a nuclear war, then the climate of opinion changed in favor of denuclearizing initiatives and visions.

Krieger:      But it was mobilized for lesser objectives. It was mobilized last for the nuclear freeze, and that was a minimalist demand. It was only to stop the increase in the size of arsenals. One thing that I do take heart from is that there is at least a discussion going on beyond civil society and into the level of former policymakers and, in Obama’s case, up to the presidency, talking about a world free of nuclear weapons as though it is a serious possibility. You mentioned Carter and Reagan as also taking it seriously at some level in their presidencies. In both cases the presidents appeared sincere in their desire and were stymied by the advisors and bureaucracies that surrounded them. If we had to make an informed guess at this point, it would be that there will be a serious attempt by the advisors and bureaucracies that surround Obama to limit his degrees of freedom in moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

Falk:           Do you think the Obama speech would have had more resonance if it had been given, let’s say, at the commencement at West Point or in the United States rather than at Prague?

Krieger:      That is a good question. It seems to me he chose Prague because he saw it as a global issue, and I think he saw it as an issue that would have resonance for people around the world. I suppose, though, that had he given that speech at the Air Force Academy, for example, it would have focused far more attention in the country on the speech and on his expressed desire to eliminate nuclear weapons. My guess is that cadets would have reacted quite favorably to it.

Falk:           That would have been very positive. Doesn’t that suggest that one objective of anti-nuclear activists should be to encourage some kind of follow-up speech here in the United States, preferably delivered in a national security venue. Such an undertaking would convey a seriousness of intention that went beyond making a rhetorical appeal to world public opinion. It would give more ground to believe that we have a president who is dedicated, as I believe Obama may be, to serve the global public interest, and not just a champion of American national interests.

Krieger:      The negotiators are acting right now on the US-Russian talks, so there is going to be a need for President Obama to speak to the public about those negotiations. When he speaks to the pubic about the progress that’s been made and that he hopes to see achieved in those negotiations toward a new treaty, he can also take that opportunity to reiterate that this is a step toward a nuclear weapons-free world and that it is only a step. As important as negotiations may be after these many years without them, we in this country need to view the progress as only a next step on the way to going to zero. I’d love to see him do that, and I’d love to see him do it in front of the cadets as well. I can’t think of a better audience for him than the Air Force Academy.

Falk:           There are a number of places where it would be more or less equivalent, but I think doing that in the United States, especially in a security-oriented venue, would be a very clear indication that this is a genuine and principal commitment of his presidency.

Krieger:      When you expand the conversation to look at the larger picture of US militarism, you have to also ask what is the relationship of nuclear weapons to the build-up now taking place in Afghanistan. I think that deserves some more thought and exploration. The other issue that I think deserves more thought and exploration is built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that is the promise of assistance in spreading so-called peaceful nuclear technology, particularly nuclear power plants, around the world. The question that comes up is whether that is compatible with actually moving to zero nuclear weapons; whether there is a means of oversight that could be implemented that would sufficiently control fissionable materials so that countries could feel assured that they could go to zero nuclear weapons without the risks of weapons proliferation stemming from nuclear power plants being too great.

Falk:           In order to do that convincingly, it would be necessary to begin treating equals equally. In other words, it is untenable to have some of the older nuclear states retaining this capacity to convert fissionable materials into weapons while insisting that other states are not entitled to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle.

Krieger:      I think it’s a given that, if we’re going to get anywhere with any of these major global issues related to nuclear weapons abolition, double standards need to be eliminated from the international system.

Falk:           But double standards are deeply embedded in the structure of the Nuclear Age.

Krieger:      Right. I think the greater problem in relation to nuclear energy is the intense desire of many countries around the world to proceed with development of nuclear energy, in part because they believe it shows a high level of technological achievement. They have bought-in to the promotional arguments that nuclear power will provide a country with its energy needs at a relatively low cost. I don’t think that’s a correct understanding, but it’s widespread. When I was at the 2009 Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting, I didn’t hear one country denounce the idea of the spread of nuclear energy technology, and most of them were continuing to enthusiastically embrace it.

Falk:           I think the oil squeeze with rising prices and the prospect of supply scarcities, as well as skepticism about the contribution of solar and wind energy, is making opposition to nuclear energy a losing battle. I don’t think you can stop the spread of nuclear energy capabilities. What can be done is to insist on a safeguarding and monitoring superstructure that makes diversion for military development much more difficult. Even this will be difficult to accomplish without reciprocating denuclearizing moves by the nuclear weapons states.

Krieger:      You absolutely have to stop the production and use of highly enriched uranium; convert existing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium only for power plants; have safeguards that involve international challenge inspections; and control all fissionable materials, including any reprocessing of plutonium. It will be a major undertaking. It will make the job of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons harder by many degrees.

Falk:           Incredibly difficult, and it will be very difficult to get countries, like the US, to accept the same kind of regulatory standards that it would want to impose on others and without mutuality nothing very significant can be achieved.

Krieger:      We’re very accustomed to such double standards. But going back to Obama, he’s a `pretty good dad, and in that sense he must understand something about double standards. If he gets it at a basic level, maybe he will be able to apply it to global politics.

Falk:           He may get it at a level of equity and fairness, but he’s also a person that is very adept at the power game and he may conclude that unless he feels very strong counterpressure from peace groups, that the only way he can be effective as a leader is by adhering to this two-tier, double standard structure. It is built very deeply into the way in which world politics has been practiced for centuries, and especially in the Nuclear Age where membership in the nuclear club has operated as such a prime geopolitical status symbol.

Krieger:      I’d like to end on a positive note. Even should it prove that Obama’s statements are only rhetoric, which I don’t believe they are, he has raised the expectations of civil society and hopefully energized civil society to believe that there is a greater opportunity now than we’ve experienced in decades, perhaps ever, to end the nuclear weapons era. Hopefully these expectations will be transformed into a larger level of public support and a course of action on the part of the Obama administration that will prove to be irreversible.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council. Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and the Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Falk and Krieger have written widely on nuclear dangers, and are co-editors of the book, At the Nuclear Precipice: Catastrophe or Transformation? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

October 20, 2009