Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: J. Raman

  • Can President Obama Change Nukes Policy?

    Originally published at truthout.org

    What should the world expect from the new US president on the nuclear front?

    The question may sound distant and largely disconnected from the current context, where the financial crisis looms as his administration’s first priority. No one can be blamed, however, for raising it, as nuclear weapons form one of the main issues on which Barack Obama differentiated himself clearly from his rivals – during the battle for the Democratic nomination as well as the war for the presidency.

    Obama did so dramatically on August 2, 2007, when confronted with a query about use of the ultimate weapon in the war on terror and against proliferation. He declared: “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance.” He then added: “Involving civilians.”

    Obama then said, “There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.” That brought reactions bordering on ridicule. “It’s naive to say,” sneered a dismissive John McCain, “that we will never use nuclear weapons.” Hillary Clinton came out with a stronger-than-Republican rebuff: “”Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”

    “Presidents,” she added for good measure, ” never take the nuclear option off the table.”

    As president now, will Obama keep the terrible option off the table? This and other questions of his nuclear outlook reflect more than ideal curiosity in regions on which the new president’s foreign policy focuses. In South Asia, one of such regions, the questions acquire added urgency.

    Before coming to the region with two nuclear-armed rivals, a little more about what Obama has let the world know so far about his mind on the weapons of mass destruction that provided only an excuse for war to his predecessor.

    In Obama’s inaugural address, the subject figured only in the sentence: “With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.” He, however, had made clearer promises during the campaign.

    In a speech at DePaul University in Chicago in October 2007, he added his voice to an anti-nuke plan endorsed earlier by a bipartisan group of former government officials from the Cold War era, including Henry Kissinger. The group had wanted the US to start building a global consensus to reverse a reliance on nuclear weapons that had become “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.” Obama set a goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in the world, adding that the US must greatly reduce its stockpile of nuclear arms as well.

    Speaking at Purdue University in Indiana in July 2008, he declared: “It’s time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons.” He added: “As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong deterrent. But we’ll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.”

    The promises compelled attention because of the contrast they presented to what the world had been hearing from the White House. As a summary by the New York-headquartered Natural Resources Defense Council put it years ago: “The Bush administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of US military forces at least for the next 50 years. Starting from this premise it is planning an extensive and expensive series of programs to sustain and modernize the existing force and to begin studies for a new ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) to be operational in 2020, a new SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) and SSBM (surface-to-surface ballistic missile) in 2030, and a new heavy bomber in 2040, as well as new warheads for all of them.”

    Nuclear weapons were to continue to play a “critical role” because they possess “unique properties” that provide “credible military options” for holding at risk “a wide range of target types” important to a potential adversary’s threatened use of “weapons of mass destruction” or “large-scale conventional military force.” The neocon regime wanted a return of the US to nuclear testing, even as Bush promoted the idea of battlefield nukes like bunker-busters.

    Obama has never disowned the general declarations of his intent on nuclear disarmament, but has increasingly been couching it in anti-terrorist terms. A more detailed “foreign policy agenda” delineated on the White House web site cites terrorism as the top-priority target of his administration’s plan of action in this area.

    After recalling Obama’s record as a senator in taking congressional action to counter “the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes,” the agenda states: “Obama and (Vice President Joseph) Biden will secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years. While working to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, Obama and Biden will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. This will deny terrorists the ability to steal or buy loose nuclear materials.”

    The agenda is silent on US fears of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands, but these continue to be voiced. Threats of American efforts to “take out” Pakistan’s nuclear arms have been heard, from time to time, ever since the fall of the military regime of Pervez Musharraf, presumed somehow to have made these weapons pilferage-proof. Apprehensions in that regard have been revived after David Sanger’s article earlier this month, based on his book, “The Worst Pakistan Nightmare for Obama.”

    Pakistan’s army and its civilian government have hastened to assure the US of the safety and security of their nuclear weapons. The Pakistani media have made clear a public resentment, which Islamabad could not officially articulate, over the implications of what are seen as Washington-Pentagon insinuations. Indignant note is made of the fact that, while there is panic over Pakistan’s weapons, India’s nuclear arsenal is not seen as a serious problem at all.

    The second task listed in the agenda – strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – has an India link, too. The agenda, however, takes no note of the blow that, according to the world peace movement, the US-India nuclear deal has dealt the treaty distinguished for its increasing brittleness over the years.

    Instead, the agenda says: “Obama and Biden will crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.” To many, the formulation would seem to reflect the false priorities that have weakened the “world nuclear order” that the NPT allegedly represents.

    The only way to strengthen the treaty would seem to lie in serious and sincere action by the leading nuclear powers on Article VI of the NPT. The provision, introduced under international pressure, says: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

    The agenda, in fairness to its formulators, addresses this issue as well. Talking of the third task of the new administration on the nuclear weapons front, the document says: “Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take US and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the US-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.”

    This, however, is easier said than done. A weighty Bush legacy of nuclear militarism is waiting to be lived down. Officially, the Obama administration is bound to an extent by the interim report of a bipartisan congressional commission, released as recently as last month, which talks about the US teetering “on the brink of losing the capability to maintain its nuclear weapons.”

    The new president cannot listen to this argument and make the nuclear leap he has promised. Daryl G. Kimball of the Arms Control Association offers a strikingly different counsel: “If Obama directs the Pentagon to conduct a congressionally mandated nuclear posture review on the basis of this ‘core deterrence’ mission, then Washington and Moscow could each slash their respective arsenals to 1,000 or fewer total warheads. This would open the way for Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge …”

    Obama faces a challenge to his drive for a change in the US nukes policy not only from the old policies he seeks to discard, but also from personalities whom he prefers to retain in the administration. Reports about a conflict of views on a crucial issue between him and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have not been officially rebutted so far. Gates continues to press for a reliable replacement warhead (RRW) program, while the president’s agenda (quoted above) asserts without ambiguity that the new administration “will stop the development of new nuclear weapons.”

    Obama has shown courage in acting for the closure of the Guantanamo torture chambers, in defiance of powerful defenders of “anti-terrorist” atrocities. Will he move forward towards nuclear disarmament in the face of inevitable opposition from the military-industrial complex?

  • New Deal on South Asian Nukes

    This article was originally published on www.truthout.org

    Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari came out last Saturday with yet another series of statements to cause more than mere ripples in South Asia. He did so especially with pronouncements on the nuclear weapons issues between India and Pakistan that have made many sections in the subcontinent sit up and take notice.

    Do these statements, however, add up to a real promise of a new deal for the region, which has continued to be a dangerous place ever since the two rival nations became nuclear-armed neighbors in May 1998?

    Addressing India from Islamabad, at a video-conference in New Delhi at “Summit 2008,” organized by the leading daily The Hindustan Times, Zardari offered nothing less than Pakistan’s cooperation in turning South Asia into a nuclear-weapon-free zone, an objective to be achieved through a “non-nuclear treaty.” As he put it challengingly, “I can get around my parliament to this view, but can you get around the Indian parliament to this view?”

    He made an even greater impact by his answer to a question about the no-first-strike nuclear policy of India and the possibility of Pakistan adopting the same stand. His response was prompt and positive. He did not stop with saying that Pakistan would not use its nuclear weapons first. He went on to declare that he was opposed to these weapons anyway and to assert: “We do not hope to get into any position where nuclear weapons have any use.”

    The official Indian reaction was that Zardari’s statements were not quite official. Voices from India’s establishment, echoed in various media reports, wondered: Whom was the Pakistani president speaking for, anyway? Tauntingly, they asked whether he had the tacit support of Pakistan’s army on this subject.

    They had a point. By all accounts, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has remained mainly under the control of the army, which is possessively proud of them. Officially, up to now, Pakistan has not altered its policy by which it has retained the right of first nuclear strike. While India has made much play about its renunciation of this option, Pakistan has maintained from the outset that it could not do so because it lacked parity with its bigger neighbor in conventional weapons.

    Pakistan’s new democratic dispensation has apparently kept its distance from the army but not demonstrated its dominance over the generals. Quite the reverse is the message sent out by the government’s attempt sometime ago to acquire control of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the army’s infamous and important arm, and Islamabad’s hasty retreat from the reform under obvious pressure.

    Rather surprisingly, there has been no other serious Indian response, not even from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose leadership may have to do business with Zardari with the party’s return to power in the general elections due early next year. The statements, however, elicited more reactions within Pakistan.

    Zardari has drawn much flak in his country before for statements considered overly friendly to India. He and the government of his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) also had to beat a retreat after his statement in a media interview suggesting that the Kashmir issue could be kept on the back burner. In the video conference, he did not say the same thing about Kashmir but repeated his other controversial remark about seeing no “threat” from India. He may come in for criticisms again on these counts. His stand on the nuclear issue, however, has attracted no opposition offensive for the moment.

    Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League(N), the main opposition, in fact, was quick to claim that he had made the proposals for nuclear peace first. Sharif, who had presided over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons tests a decade ago, let his party clarify: “This was Nawaz Sharif’s proposal as prime minister. On the Pakistan side, the position has always been consistent. But because India refuses to abandon its nuclear weapons, this proposal has been in the doldrums.”

    The PML(N) also claimed that the proposal was contained in the Lahore Declaration signed between Sharif and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on February 1, 1999. While the claims are open to question, observers in Pakistan actually expect the opposition to unleash an offensive against the government on the presidential pronouncements. Front-ranking newspaper The Daily Times, for example, forecasts that a “chorus of criticism will now most probably overwhelm Mr. Zardari’s overtures to India and make them look like ‘concessions.’ “

    As for the reactions from uncommitted quarters, they are asking the same questions as India’s establishment. Lieutenant-General (retired) Talat Masood, a political commentator and head of the Pakistani chapter of Pugwash says:”The big question is, can President Zardari take along Pakistan’s ruling establishment, especially the military?” He adds, “Even if (Zardari) was not fully familiar with the nuclear vocabulary, what he possibly meant was that there has to be a strategic restraint regime between the two countries.”

    The fact is, the ruling establishments of the two countries have never been ready to consider any “strategic restraint regime” that envisages any reduction of their nuclear arsenals or any reversal of their nuclear weapons programs. They have been ready, in other words, to cooperate only in order to present a picture of “responsible” nuclear armed neighbors to the rest of the world.

    This, actually, was the larger purpose also of the Lahore Declaration, signed just nine months after nuclear weapons tests in both countries. The declaration recognizes “that the nuclear dimension of the security environment of the two countries adds to their responsibility for avoidance of conflict between the two countries.” The document voices commitment, not to regional peace as such, but to the “objective of universal nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.”

    The declaration calls upon the two countries only to “take immediate steps for reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons and discuss concepts and doctrines with a view to elaborating measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields, aimed at prevention of conflict.”

    India and Pakistan are said to have made much progress in their “peace process” initiated in 2004. New Delhi and Islamabad, however, have made sure that the nuclear part of the process made no advance beyond what the declaration mandated. The confidence-building measures (CBMs) – which have never gone beyond steps like notification of each other before tests of nuclear-capable missiles – were somehow supposed to create confidence that the people of the two countries were safe even when such missiles stayed in military deployment.

    Setting up a hotline between designated officials of the two armies, in order to avert chances of nuclear accidents among other things, has not exactly made the people of the subcontinent safer than before. It has not done so because the nuclear hawks of the two countries have not desisted from threatening use of the weapons by design. Terrifying nuclear threats have been traded, as we have recalled more than once in these columns, between the two countries during the Kargil conflict of 1999 (following on the heels of the Lahore Declaration) and the fearsome confrontation of 2002.

    The peace process has not prevented the nuclear militarists in both countries from pursuing their projects. The period since the declaration has seen both participating in a missile race, displaying no coyness about its nuclear dimension at all. In 2004, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf boasted: “My government has spent more money in the last three years on enhancing Pakistan’s nuclear capability than (spent for this purpose) in the previous 30 years.” We do not know whether the country’s current economic crisis has made any difference in this regard. Successive Indian governments may not have been forthcoming with similar figures. There is little doubt, however, that under the shroud of secrecy, they have swelled with the same pride over their misuse of taxpayers’ money to build weapons of mass-murder.

    At one point In the course of talks on CBMs, the rulers of India and Pakistan even agreed to seek “parity” with nuclear powers (P5), “consultations” with them “on matters of common concern,” and development of a “common nuclear doctrine.” The idea has not been pursued seriously, but has not been abandoned officially.

    This strange partnership of sworn nuclear rivals does not make the proposal from Pakistan’s president sound like a reliable promise for the peace-loving people of the region.

    J. Sri Raman is a freelance author and peace activist in India. He is the author of ” Flashpoint.”