Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: US Nuclear Weapons Policy

  • It’s Time for the Senate to Vote on New START

    This article was originally published by the Washington Post.

    The Senate should promptly vote to approve the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) with Russia for one reason: It increases U.S. national security. This is precisely why Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared at the outset of Senate consideration of the treaty that it has “the unanimous support of America’s military leadership.”

    The treaty reduces and caps the Russian nuclear arsenal. It reestablishes and makes stronger the verification procedures that allow U.S. inspectors to conduct on-site inspections and surveillance of Russian nuclear weapons and facilities. It strengthens international efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, and it opens the door to progress on further critical nonproliferation efforts, such as reducing Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

    Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, and seven former Strategic Command (STRATCOM) chiefs have called on Senate leaders to move quickly.

    In addition to our military leadership, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty among national security experts. Also, officials from the past seven administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, testified before Senate committees in support of the treaty. In fact, the number of Republican former officials testifying outnumbered the number of Democrats.

    We were part of a group of 30 former national security leaders from both political parties — including former secretary of state Colin Powell, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci and former national security adviser Sandy Berger — who published an open letter in support of the treaty.

    The Senate has done its due diligence: Over the course of 21 hearings and briefings during the last five months, senators have had the opportunity to ask questions and put to rest concerns. From the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, senators learned that the treaty in no way limits the ability of our military to deploy the missile defenses it needs or wants. From STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton, they learned that with the treaty in place, the United States will retain a strong and reliable deterrent. Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even delayed the committee vote on the treaty to give senators an extra month to review background materials and seek answers to their questions.

    Now it is time to act.

    While substantive questions about the treaty have been put to rest, some senators are trying to delay consideration of it based on an unrelated funding issue, namely, claims that future funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal might be insufficient.

    This is wrong for two reasons.

    First, these claims fly in the face of the considered opinions of Chilton and National Nuclear Security Administration head Thomas D’Agostino, the men charged with overseeing our nuclear weapons and weapons laboratories. They, along with Gates and Mullen, have made clear that the administration’s 10-year, $80 billion plan to modernize our nuclear infrastructure, which would result in a 15 percent increase over current spending levels, represents the funding level that is needed and can be executed in a timely manner.

    More important, delaying this treaty over an unrelated matter undermines our national security.

    By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes Sept. 16 on whether to send the treaty to the Senate floor for ratification, it will have been more than 280 days and counting since the United States lost the ability to conduct on-site inspections, monitoring and verification of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. This ability will not begin again until the treaty is ratified.

    As Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told the committee, “The problem of the breakdown of our verification, which lapsed Dec. 5, is very serious and impacts our national security.”

    Given the national security stakes and the overwhelming support from the military and national security community, we hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will send the treaty to the floor with robust bipartisan backing and that senators will promptly ratify it with the kind of resounding margin such measures have historically enjoyed.

    Senate approval of New START would send a strong message to the world that the United States can overcome partisan differences and take concrete, practical action to reduce the nuclear threat and enhance our nation’s security.

  • New Terms for a Common Understanding of De-Alerting

    2010_08_13_new_terms_dealerting.pdf

  • The Abolition of Nuclear Weapons and US Vulnerability

    At a recent meeting a question came up concerning how to respond to someone who asks, “Won’t the abolition of nuclear weapons leave the United States vulnerable?”  Here is my response.

    First, it is important to make clear that we are not asking for the US alone to disarm its nuclear arsenal.  Rather than seeking unilateral disarmament, we are calling for the US to lead a multilateral process for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  We are convinced that all countries, and especially the US, would be safer and more secure in a world without nuclear weapons.

    Second, we are not calling for going to zero nuclear weapons overnight.  Rather, it would be done cautiously over time and in phases.  The term “phased” in the disarmament process is very important.  By proceeding in phases, it means there would be a plan in place that allows for confidence building in discrete steps.  Each phase would need to be completed before moving on to the next phase.  US military and security professionals would be involved in designing the phases.  If problems arise in a phase, attention can be given to working them out before proceeding to the next phase.

    Third, there would need to be means built into the disarmament process by which there is confidence that cheating is not occurring.  This would require verification of the disarmament process.  President Reagan reached the conclusion that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  He supported the abolition of nuclear weapons, but understood the necessity of verification procedures.  He said, “Trust, but verify.”  This makes sense and would be a key element of the disarmament plan.  

    Verification procedures would need to include not only technical means, such as remote sensing and satellite imagery, but also the ability to hold on-site inspections, including unscheduled challenge inspections.  All sides would have to feel sufficiently comfortable with the verification procedures to move forward into new phases of the disarmament process.

    Fourth, the process would be designed to be irreversible.  It would include provisions that weapons that are dismantled could not later be converted back to weaponry.  Verification procedures would ensure the irreversibility of the process.

    Fifth, transparency would be another key element of the disarmament process.  Countries would reveal what weapons and delivery systems they possess in their nuclear arsenals, and the process would be subject to confirmation by means of inspections and verification.  The US has recently taken an important step toward transparency by revealing that its nuclear arsenal contains 5,113 weapons deployed and in reserve (plus several thousand more awaiting dismantlement).

    Sixth, the question itself implies that currently the US nuclear arsenal prevents the country from being vulnerable to nuclear attack.  This is clearly not the case.  Nuclear weapons do not provide physical protection to their possessors.  Their power to defend against nuclear attack is based upon their ability to deter by threat of nuclear retaliation.  But deterrence is only a theory and one that cannot be proven.  Deterrence cannot protect against accidents or miscalculations.  Nor can it protect against nuclear armed terrorists.  Additionally, nuclear deterrence may simply fail if the threat of retaliation is not believed.  Nuclear deterrence theory requires leaders to behave rationally, and not all leaders do at all times.  

    Seventh, the nuclear status quo of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” supports double standards that encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries.  Such proliferation makes accidents and proliferation to terrorist groups more likely, diminishing security for all.  The United States and the world would be safer and more secure in a world without nuclear weapons.  

    Finally, in a world without nuclear weapons, the US, with its strong conventional military forces, would be far more secure than in a world with many nuclear weapons states and the threat of nuclear terrorism.  Achieving a world without nuclear weapons would leave the US more secure and less vulnerable than it is at the present when the country remains subject to being destroyed by a nuclear attack.

    The choice before the US now is to continue to live with the vulnerability of the threats posed by weapons capable of destroying cities, countries, civilization and the human species along with other complex forms of life, or to proceed cautiously on the path to nuclear weapons abolition.  The nuclear status quo is filled with extreme risks.  The path to zero nuclear weapons may also contain risks, but of the options available, it is the safer and more secure path not only for the US but for the world.  To follow this path, which has legal, moral and practical imperatives, will require US leadership and the commitment of US citizens.

  • President Obama Is on the Right Track

    This article was originally published on the National Journal Experts’ Blog

    President Obama is on the right track with his multiple efforts to reduce nuclear dangers.  I only wish that it were a faster track and reflected a greater sense of urgency.  His policies take account of some important current realities: The Cold War has ended (20 years ago); the greatest threat confronting the US and the world is no longer all-out nuclear war, but nuclear proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorists; and the United States has obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to engage in “good faith” negotiations to achieve total nuclear disarmament. 

    The Obama administration made a smart move by ruling out using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  It could have gone further, though.  While the administration surely sees its posture as a useful threat for states not in compliance, this is a two-edged sword.  Such threats also send a message to the rest of the world that the US still finds nuclear weapons useful and is willing to threaten their use.  This continued reliance on nuclear weapons reinforces the current double standards of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” which in the long run will not hold.  Some states may be encouraged, as was North Korea, to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities in the belief that they can deter an attack by a more powerful adversary.

    The nuclear weapons reductions in the New START agreement are modest and leave more than enough capability on each side to destroy civilization, but they are a step forward and they do extend the important verification provisions of the first START agreement.  They should be seen as a platform from which to continue the downward movement in nuclear arms to zero.  Ultimately, zero is the only safe, secure and stable number of nuclear weapons in the world. 

    The US has enormous conventional force capability.  While this allows us to reduce our reliance upon nuclear weapons, it also creates problems with the Russians in achieving further nuclear reductions.  Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns with our missile defense deployments, our unwillingness to curtail space weaponization, and our Prompt Global Strike program that would entail putting conventional warheads on ICBMs.  To get to substantially lower levels of nuclear arms and finally to zero, we are going to have to meet the concerns of the Russians and other countries that we are not simply making the world safe for US conventional weapons superiority.

    Realists such as former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger support the new nuclear posture of the Obama administration.  Critics such as Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain are playing nuclear politics with loaded barrels, pursuing outdated nuclear policies that are MAD in all senses, not only policies of Mutual Assured Destruction but policies based upon Mutual Assured Delusions.  We cannot continue to base our security on nuclear weapons without running the risk of massive and catastrophic disaster.  

    I would urge President Obama to move rapidly in building on the progress he has made to this point.  There is no scenario that would justify US use of nuclear weapons again.  Nuclear deterrence is unstable and dangerous.  Deterrence is a theory and it cannot be proven to be effective under all conditions in the future.  It came close to failing on various occasions during the Cold War.  Deterrence relies upon rationality, and it remains a dangerous assumption that all leaders will act rationally at all times.  Deterrence is subject to human fallibility, and human fallibility and nuclear weapons are a flammable mixture.

    A stronger indication that President Obama is indeed committed to seeking “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” would be a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons, coupled with taking the weapons off hair-trigger alert and continuing to work with the Russians and soon other nuclear weapon states on major reductions in arsenals.  We should be pursuing a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  US leadership for this will be essential.

  • The New US Nuclear Posture

    In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and told the world that the United States seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” A year later, his administration is moving forward toward this goal. The Obama administration released its Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010. On April 8, 2010, the president flew back to Prague to sign a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russians.

    In both tone and substance the new Nuclear Posture Review is far more positive and hopeful than that of the George W. Bush administration. The Obama nuclear posture puts its primary focus on preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism. “The threat of global nuclear war has become remote,” it says, “but the risk of nuclear attack has increased.” It views nuclear terrorism as “today’s most immediate and extreme danger.”  

    To prevent terrorists, such as al Qaeda, from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Obama administration seeks to bolster the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and secure all loose nuclear materials globally. It convened a Nuclear Security Summit on April 12-13, 2010 in Washington, with leaders of 46 other countries participating in making plans to prevent nuclear terrorism. The Obama administration is also pursuing arms control efforts, including the New START agreement, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.  

    The administration has been straight forward in stating that it is taking these steps “as a means of strengthening our ability to mobilize broad international support for the measures needed to reinforce the non-proliferation regime and secure nuclear materials worldwide.”  In other words, the Obama administration understands that the US needs to show that it is taking steps to meet its own nuclear disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (something the Bush administration never grasped) if it hopes to have the support of other parties to that treaty for keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

    Many advocates of a nuclear weapon-free world, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, encouraged the Obama administration to go further and adopt a policy of No First Use; that is, committing to use nuclear weapons only in response to a preceding nuclear attack.  While the administration did not demonstrate this level of leadership, it did consider a policy of making the deterrence of a nuclear attack the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons. However, it dismissed even this step, while offering some hope that it will work toward this end in the future.  

    The administration did take a smaller step by committing in the new Nuclear Posture Review not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It referred specifically to North Korea and Iran as countries out of compliance with the treaty. The new nuclear posture will please some advocates of nuclear weapons by leaving open “a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners.”  

    The new Nuclear Posture Review states that the “fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners.” This suggests confusion in the policy. If terrorists are, in fact, the greatest threat to the country, and as non-state actors they cannot be deterred, then who exactly are the weapons deterring? The review may be contemplating Russia or China, but it also recognizes that the US is interconnected with these countries and the chances of war with them are very low. Or, it may be contemplating some unknown contingency in the future, but if this is the case then wouldn’t the country be better off moving more rapidly toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons?  The review makes clear that the US “would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” This approach, and the vagueness of “vital interests,” will likely be viewed internationally as an unfortunate double standard that other countries may also choose to rely upon.

    In the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the US and Russia will reduce their deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 each and reduce deployed delivery vehicles to 700 each with 100 reserve delivery vehicles each by the year 2017.  It is not a large step forward, but it is a step in the right direction, and the Obama administration is committed to seeking further reductions with Russia.  Together the two countries have some 95 percent of the world’s 23,000 nuclear arms.  The new US nuclear posture indicates that the US “will place importance on Russia joining us as we move to lower levels.”  In the document, however, there are no constraints on the ability of the US to deploy missile defenses.  Since this is a major concern to Russia, it could limit the possibilities for additional progress toward nuclear disarmament.  

    One of the phrases that recurs throughout the new Nuclear Posture Review is “ensuring the safety, security and effectiveness” of nuclear warheads.  Safety and security both make sense.  If we are to retain nuclear weapons, we want them to be both safe from accident and secure from theft.  But what does “effective” mean?  That the weapons will serve the purpose of deterring?  If so, who?  Effectiveness would be impossible to measure unless we can answer the question, “Effective for what?”  In the end, “safe, secure and effective,” appear to be arguments for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and spending an additional $5 billion on its nuclear weapons laboratories over the next five years.

    The Nuclear Posture Review concludes by looking toward a world without nuclear weapons. It recognizes that certain conditions are necessary for such a world. These include halting nuclear proliferation, achieving greater transparency into nuclear weapons programs, improving verification methods, developing effective enforcement measures, and resolving regional disputes. The review states that such conditions do not exist today. However, with the requisite political will, these conditions could be developed in the process of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention – a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. While pausing to celebrate the incremental steps in arms reductions and the limitations on nuclear weapons use that are being made now, we should also recognize that a policy of No First Use and a commitment to negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention would move us far more rapidly toward the peace and security of the nuclear weapon-free world envisioned by President Obama.  

  • New Think and Old Weapons

    Every four years the White House issues a “nuclear posture review.” That may sound like an anachronism. It isn’t. In a world where the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons — and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear appetites — what the United States says about its arsenal matters enormously.

    President Obama’s review was due to Congress in December. That has been delayed, in part because of administration infighting. The president needs to get this right. It is his chance to finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.

    Mr. Obama has already committed rhetorically to the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But we are concerned that some of his advisers, especially at the Pentagon, are resisting his bold ambitions. He needs to stick with the ideas he articulated in his campaign and in speeches last year in Prague and at the United Nations.

    These are some of the important questions the posture review must address:

    THEIR PURPOSE: Current doctrine gives nuclear weapons a “critical role” in defending the United States and its allies. And it suggests they could be used against foes wielding chemical, biological or even conventional forces — not just nuclear arms. Mr. Obama’s aides have proposed changing that to say that the “primary” purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. This still invites questions about whether Washington values — and might use — nuclear forces against non-nuclear targets.

    Given America’s vast conventional military superiority, broader uses are neither realistic nor necessary. Any ambiguity undercuts Washington’s credibility when it argues that other countries have no strategic reason to develop their own nuclear arms. The sole purpose of American nuclear forces should be to deter a nuclear attack against this country or its allies.

    HOW MANY: President George W. Bush disdained arms control as old think, and Washington and Moscow have not signed an arms reduction treaty since 2002. Mr. Obama launched negotiations on a new agreement that would slash the number of warheads each side has deployed from 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675. The talks are dragging on, but there is hope for an agreement soon. Both sides should go deeper.

    The review should make clear that the United States is ready to move, as a next step, down to 1,000 deployed warheads — military experts say half that number is enough to wipe out the assets of Russia, which is no longer an enemy. China, the only major nuclear power adding to its arsenal, is estimated to have 100 to 200 warheads. The treaty being negotiated says nothing about the nearly 15,000 warheads, in total, that the United States and Russia keep as backups — the so-called hedge. And it says nothing about America’s 500 short-range nuclear weapons, which are considered secure, or Russia’s 3,000 or more, which are chillingly vulnerable to theft.

    The review should make clear that there is no need for a huge hedge, and that tactical weapons have an utter lack of strategic value — as a prelude to reducing both. Certainly no general we know of could imagine exploding a warhead on a battlefield. Today’s greatest nuclear danger is that terrorists will steal or build a weapon. That is best countered by halting proliferation and securing and reducing stockpiles and other material.

    NEW WEAPONS: The United States built its last new warhead in 1989. So when aides to President George W. Bush called for building new weapons, with new designs and new capabilities, it opened this country to charges of hypocrisy and double standards when it demanded that North Korea and Iran end their nuclear programs.

    Mr. Obama has said that this country does not need new weapons. But we are concerned the review will open the door to just that by directing the labs to study options — including a new weapons design — for maintaining the arsenal. The government has a strong and hugely expensive system for ensuring that the stockpile is safe and reliable. Mr. Obama has already vastly increased the labs’ budgets. The review should make clear that there is no need for a new weapon.

    ALERT LEVELS: The United States and Russia each still have about 1,000 weapons ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Mr. Obama has rightly described this as a dangerous cold war relic. The review should commit to taking as many of those forces off hair-trigger alert as possible — and encourage Russia to do the same.

    •

    In April, Mr. Obama will host a much needed summit meeting on the need to better secure nuclear material from terrorists. In May, Washington will encourage a United Nations-led conference to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the bedrock, and battered, agreement for curbing the spread of nuclear arms.

    President Obama will also have to persuade the Senate to ratify the Start follow-on treaty, and we hope he will quickly press the Senate to approve the test ban treaty. He is also working with allies to revive nuclear talks with North Korea and to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. Getting the nuclear posture review right is essential for moving all of this ahead.

  • Obama Goes Nuclear

    This article was originally published on Counterpunch.

    Is there any chance that President Barack Obama can return to his long-held stand critical of nuclear power? Is he open to hearing from scientists and energy experts, such as Amory Lovins, who can refute the pro-nuclear arguments that have apparently influenced him?

    Obama’s declaration in his State of the Union speech on January 27 about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” marked a significant change for him. His announcement Tuesday on moving ahead on $8.3 billion in federal government loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants and increasing the loan guarantee fund to $54.5 billion was a further major step. Wall Street is reluctant to invest money in the dangerous and extremely expensive technology.

    Before taking office, including as a candidate for president, Obama not only was negative about atomic energy but—unusual for a politician—indicated a detailed knowledge of its threat to life.

    “I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa on December 30, 2007. “My general view is that until we can make certain that nuclear power plants are safe, that they have solved the storage problem—because I’m opposed to Yucca Mountain and just dumping…in one state, in Nevada particularly, since there’s potentially an earthquake line there—until we solve those problems and the whole nuclear industry can show that they can produce clean, safe energy without enormous subsidies from the U.S. government, I don’t think that’s the best option. I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel and strategies [for] alternative fuels.”

    As he told the editorial board of the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire on November 25, 2007: “I don’t think there’s anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up…and irradiate us…and kill us. That’s the problem.”

    Yes, that’s the big problem with splitting the atom—one that has existed since the start  of nuclear power and will always be inherent in the technology. Using the perilous process of fission to generate electricity with its capacity for catastrophic accidents and its production of highly toxic radioactive poisons called nuclear waste will always be unsafe. And it is unnecessary considering the safe energy technologies now available, from solar, wind and other clean sources.

    Just how dangerous it is has been underlined in a book just published by the New York Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Written by a team of scientists led by noted Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, using health data that have become available since the 1986 accident, it concludes that the fatality total “from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated at 985,000 additional [cancer] deaths.” This is in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries where Chernobyl’s poisons fell. The toll, they relate, continues to rise.

    Chernobyl was a different design from the nuclear plants which the U.S., France and Japan seek now to build but disasters can also happen involving these plants and they, too, produce the highly toxic nuclear waste poisons. The problem is fission itself. It’s no way to produce electricity.

    Obama has been aware of this. As he stated at a Londonderry, New Hampshire town meeting on October 7, 2007: “Nuclear power has a host of problems that have not been solved. We haven’t solved the storage situation effectively. We have not dealt with all of the security aspects of our nuclear plants and nuclear power is very expensive.”

    He still left the door open to it. His Energy Plan as a candidate stated: “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and [nuclear weapons] proliferation.”

    In his first year as president, nuclear power proponents worked to influence him. Among nuclear opponents, there has been anxiety regarding Obama’s two top aides, both of whom have been involved with what is now the utility operating more nuclear power plants than any other in the United States, Exelon.

    Rahm Emanuel, now Obama’s chief of staff, as an investment banker was in the middle of the $8.2 billion merger in 1999 of Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and Peco Energy to put together Exelon. David Axelrod, now a senior Obama advisor and formerly chief campaign strategist, was an Exelon consultant. Candidate Obama received sizeable contributions from Exelon executives including from John Rowe, its president and chief executive officer who in 2007 also became chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. nuclear industry’s main trade group.

    It’s not only been nuclear opponents who have seen a link between Exelon and the Obama administration. Forbes magazine, in its January 18th issue, in an article on John Rowe and how he has “focused the company on nuclear,” displayed a sidebar headlined, “The President’s Utility.”  It read: “Ties are tight between Exelon and the Obama administration,” noting Exelon political contributions and featuring Emanuel and Axelrod with photos and descriptions of their Exelon connections.

    The Forbes article spoke of how last year “Emanuel e-mailed Rowe on the eve of the House vote on global warming legislation and asked that he reach out to some uncommitted Democrats. ‘We are proud to be the President’s utility,’ says Elizabeth Moler, Exelon’s chief lobbyist,” the article went on. “It’s nice for John to be able to go to the White House and they know his name.’”

    Chicago-based Exelon’s website boasts of its operating “the largest nuclear fleet in the nation and the third largest in the world.” It owns 17 nuclear power plants which “represent approximately 20 percent of the U.S. nuclear industry’s power capacity.”

    The climate change or global warming issue is another factor in Obama’s change on nuclear power. An Associated Press article of January 31 on Obama’s having “singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address and his spending plan for the next budget,” began: “President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.”

    MSNBC’s Mike Stuckey on February 9 reported about “Obama’s new support for nuclear power, which some feel may be a down payment for Republican backing on a climate change bill.”

    After the “safe, clean nuclear power” claim, Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, declared: “Politically, Obama likely was simply parroting the effort being led by Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham to gain support for a climate bill by adding massive subsidies for nuclear power, offshore oil and ‘clean’ coal. But recycling George W. Bush energy talking points is no way to solve the climate crisis or develop a sustainable energy policy…Indeed, Obama knows better. Candidate Obama understood that nuclear power is neither safe nor clean.”

    Climate change has been used by those promoting a “revival” of nuclear power—there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant ordered and built in the U.S. in 37 years—as a new argument. In fact, nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming considering the overall “nuclear cycle”—uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication and the disposition of radioactive waste, and so on.

    Climate change is also one argument for pushing atomic energy of  another major influence on Obama on nuclear power, Steven Chu, his Department of Energy secretary. Chu typifies the religious-like zeal for nuclear power emanating for decades from scientists in the U.S. government’s string of national nuclear laboratories. Chu was director of one of these, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, before becoming head of DOE.

    First established during World War II’s Manhattan Project to build atomic weapons, the laboratories after the war began promoting civilian nuclear technology—and have been pushing it unceasingly ever since. It has been a way to perpetuate the vested interest created during World War II.  The number of nuclear weapons that could be built was limited because atomic bombs don’t lend themselves to commercial distribution, but in pushing food irradiation, nuclear-powered airplanes and rockets, atomic devices for excavation and, of course, nuclear power, the budgets and staffs of the national nuclear laboratories could be maintained, indeed increase.

    That was the analysis of David Lilienthal, first chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which preceded the Department of Energy. Lilienthal in his 1963 book Change, Hope, and the Bomb wrote: “The classic picture of the scientist as a creative individual, a man obsessed, working alone through the night, a man in a laboratory pushing an idea—this has changed. Now scientists are ranked in platoons. They are organization men. In many cases the independent and humble search for new truths about nature has been confused with the bureaucratic impulse to justify expenditure and see that next year’s budget is bigger than last’s.”

    Lilienthal wrote about the “elaborate and even luxurious [national nuclear] laboratories that have grown up at Oak Ridge, Argonne, Brookhaven” and the push to use nuclear devices for “blowing out harbors, making explosions underground to produce steam, and so on” which show “how far scientists and administrators will go to try to establish a nonmilitary use” for nuclear technology.

    Chu, like so many of the national nuclear laboratory scientists and administrators, minimizes the dangers of radioactivity. If they didn’t, if they acknowledged how life-threatening the radiation produced by nuclear technology is, their favorite technology would crumble.

    A major theme of Chu, too, is a return to the notion promoted by the national nuclear laboratories in the 1950s and 60s of “recycling” and “reusing” nuclear waste. This way, they have hoped, it might not be seen as waste at all. The concept was to use radioactive Cesium-137 (the main poison discharged in the Chernobyl disaster) to irradiate food, to use depleted uranium to harden bullets and shells, and so on. In recent weeks, with Obama carrying out his pledge not  to allow Yucca Mountain to become a nuclear waste dump, Chu set up a “blue-ribbon” panel on radioactive  waste—stacked with nuclear power advocates including Exelon’s John Rowe—that is expected to stress the “recycling” theory.  

    “We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy,” declared Chu in January as he announced DOE’s budget plan—which included an increase in the 2011 federal budget in monies for nuclear loan guarantees to build new nuclear plants cited by Obama Tuesday. “We are, as we have repeatedly said, working hard to restart the American nuclear power industry.”

    The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees Obama announced Tuesday is to come from $18.5 billion in guarantees proposed by the George W. Bush administration and authorized by Congress in 2005. “My budget proposes tripling the loan guarantees we provide to help finance safe, clean nuclear facilities,” said Obama Tuesday, referring to the DOE plan which would add $36 billion and bring the loan guarantee fund to $54.5. And this despite candidate Obama warning about “enormous subsidies from the U.S. government” to the nuclear industry.

    The $8.3 billion in loan guarantees is to go toward the Southern Company of Atlanta constructing two nuclear power reactors in Burke, Georgia. These are to be AP1000 nuclear power plants designed by the Westinghouse nuclear division (now owned by Toshiba) although in October the designs were rejected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as likely being unable to withstand events like tornadoes and earthquakes.

    Obama’s change of stance on nuclear power has led to an earthquake of its own politically. MoveOn, the nonprofit advocacy group that has raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates including Obama, gauged sentiment of his State of the Union speech by having10,000 MoveOn members record their views. Every few seconds they pressed a button signaling their reactions—ranging from “great” to “awful.” When Obama got his line on energy, the overwhelming judgment was awful. “The most definitive drop in enthusiasm is when President Obama talked about nuclear power and offshore drilling,” said Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn’s director of political advocacy. “They’re looking for clean energy sources that prioritize wind and solar.”

    “Safe, clean nuclear power—it’s an oxymoron,” said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace USA. “The president knows better. Just because radiation is invisible doesn’t mean it’s clean.”

    “From a health perspective, the proposal of the Obama administration to increase federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors poses a serious risk to Americans,” said Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. “Adding new reactors will raise the chance for a catastrophic meltdown. It will also increase the amount of radioactive chemicals routinely emitted from reactors into the environment—and human bodies. New reactors will raise rates of cancer—which are already unacceptably high—especially to infants and children. Public policies affecting America’s energy future should reduce, rather than raise, hazards to our citizens.”

    As to government loan guarantees, “The last thing Americans want is another government bailout for a failing industry, but that’s exactly what they’re getting from the Obama administration,” said Ben Schreiber, the climate and energy tax analyst of Friends of the Earth.

    “It would be not only good policy but good politics for Obama to abandon the nuclear loan guarantee program,” said Mariotte of NIRS.

    After Obama’s Tuesday declaration on loan guarantees, Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, said: “Unfortunately, the president’s decision is fuel for opposition to costly and dangerous nuclear power. It signals a widening of a divide as the administration steps back from its promise for a change in energy policy and those of us who are committed to a change.”

    “We are deeply disturbed by President Obama’s decision,” said Peter Wilk, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Not only does this put taxpayers on the hook for billions, it prioritizes a dirty, dangerous, and expensive technology over public health.  From the beginning to the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear reactors remain a serious threat to public health and safety.  From uranium mining waste to operating reactors leaking radioactivity to the lack of radioactive waste solutions, nuclear power continues to pose serious public health threats.”

    Nuclear opponents have been disappointed in a lack of access to the Obama White House of those with a critical view on nuclear power—who could counteract the pro-nuclear arguments that Obama has been fed. Will President Obama open himself to hearing from those who question nuclear power?

    Obama has credibility trouble already. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote on January 26:

        “Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer…Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map…Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.”

  • Obama’s Atomic Blunder

    As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.

    In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not—pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century’s most expensive technological failure.

    Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

    The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion.

    The Southern Company which wants to build these two new reactors has cut at least one deal with Japanese financiers set to cash in on American taxpayer largess. The interest rate on the federal guarantees remains bitterly contested. The funding is being debated between at least five government agencies, and may well be tested in the courts. It’s not clear whether union labor will be required and what impact that might have on construction costs.

    The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts warn the likely failure rate for government-back reactor construction loans could be in excess of 50%. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has admitted he was unaware of the CBO’s report when he signed on to the Georgia guarantees.

    Over the past several years the estimated price tag for proposed new reactors has jumped from $2-3 billion each in some cases to more than $12 billion today. The Chair of the NRC currently estimates it at $10 billion, well before a single construction license has been issued, which will take at least a year.

    Energy experts at the Rocky Mountain Institute and elsewhere estimate that a dollar invested in increased efficiency could save as much as seven times as much energy than one invested in nuclear plants can produce, while producing ten times as many permanent jobs.

    Georgia has been targeted largely because its regulators have demanded ratepayers put up the cash for the reactors as they’re being built. Florida and Georgia are among a small handful of states taxing electric consumers for projects that cannot come on line for many years, and that may never deliver a single electron of electricity.

    Two Florida Public Service Commissioners, recently appointed by Republican Governor Charlie Crist (now a candidate for the US Senate), helped reject over a billion dollars in rate hikes demanded by Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy, both of which want to build double-reactors at ratepayer expense. The utilities now say they’ll postpone the projects proposed for Turkey Point and Levy County.

    In 2005 the Bush Administration set aside some $18.5 billion for reactor loan guarantees, but the Department of Energy has been unable to administer them. Obama wants an additional $36 billion to bring the fund up to $54.5 billion. Proposed projects in South Carolina, Maryland and Texas appear to be next in line.

    But the NRC has raised serious questions about Toshiba-owned Westinghouse’s AP-1000 slated for Georgia’s Vogtle site, as well as for South Carolina and Turkey Point. The French-made EPR design proposed for Maryland has been challenged by regulators in Finland, France and Great Britain. In Texas, a $4 billion price jump has sparked a political upheaval in San Antonio and elsewhere, throwing the future of that project in doubt.

    Taxpayers are also on the hook for potential future accidents from these new reactors. In 1957, the industry promised Congress and the country that nuclear technology would quickly advance to the point that private insurers would take on the liability for any future disaster, which could by all serious estimates run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Only $11 billion has been set aside the cover the cost of such a catastrophe. But now the industry says it will not build even this next generation of plants without taxpayers underwriting liability for future accidents. Thus the “temporary” program could ultimately stretch out to a full century or more.

    In the interim, Obama has all but killed Nevada’s proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. He has appointed a commission of nuclear advocates to “investigate” the future of high-level reactor waste. But after 53 years, the industry is further from a solution than ever.

    Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that at least 27 of America’s 104 licensed reactors are now leaking radioactive tritium. The worst case may be Entergy’s Vermont Yankee, near the state’s southeastern border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. High levels of contamination have been found in test wells around the reactor, and experts believe the Connecticut River is at serious risk.

    A furious statewide grassroots campaign aims to shut the plant, whose license expires in 2012. A binding agreement between Entergy and the state gives the legislature the power to deny an extension. US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has demanded the plant close. The legislature may vote on it in a matter of days.

    Obama has now driven a deep wedge between himself and the core of the environmental movement, which remains fiercely anti-nuclear. While reactor advocates paint the technology green, the opposition has been joined by fiscal conservatives like the National Taxpayer Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

    Reactor backers hailing a “renaissance” in atomic energy studiously ignore France’s catastrophic Olkiluoto project, now $3 billion over budget and 3 years behind schedule. Parallel problems have crippled another project at Flamanville, France, and are virtually certain to surface in the US.

    The reactor industry has spent untold millions lobbying for this first round of loan guarantees. There’s no doubt it will seek far more in the coming months. Having failed to secure private American financing, the question will be: in a tight economy, how much public money will Congress throw at this obsolete technology.

    The potential flow of taxpayer guarantees to Georgia means nuclear opponents now have a tangible target. Also guaranteed is ferocious grassroots opposition to financing, licensing and construction of this and all other new reactor proposals, as well as to continued operation of leaky rustbucket reactors like Vermont Yankee.

    The “atomic renaissance” is still a very long way from going tangibly critical.

  • The Path to Nuclear Security: Implementing the President’s Prague Agenda

    This speech was delivered by Joe Biden to the National Defense University on February 18, 2010.

    Ladies and gentlemen; Secretaries Gates and Chu; General Cartwright; Undersecretary Tauscher; Administrator D’Agostino; members of our armed services; students and faculty; thank you all for coming.

    At its founding, Elihu Root gave this campus a mission that is the very essence of our national defense: “Not to promote war, but to preserve peace by intelligent and adequate preparation to repel aggression.” For more than a century, you and your predecessors have heeded that call. There are few greater contributions citizens can claim.

    Many statesmen have walked these grounds, including our Administration’s outstanding National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones. You taught him well. George Kennan, the scholar and diplomat, lectured at the National War College in the late 1940s. Just back from Moscow, in a small office not far from here, he developed the doctrine of Containment that guided a generation of Cold War foreign policy.

    Some of the issues that arose during that time seem like distant memories. But the topic I came to discuss with you today, the challenge posed by nuclear weapons, continues to demand our urgent attention.

    Last April, in Prague, President Obama laid out his vision for protecting our country from nuclear threats. 

    He made clear we will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons, while retaining a safe, secure, and effective arsenal as long as we still need it.  We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  And we will do everything in our power to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists and also to states that don’t already possess them.

    It’s easy to recognize the threat posed by nuclear terrorism.  But we must not underestimate how proliferation to a state could destabilize regions critical to our security and prompt neighbors to seek nuclear weapons of their own. 

    Our agenda is based on a clear-eyed assessment of our national interest.  We have long relied on nuclear weapons to deter potential adversaries. 

    Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

    Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

    As we’ve said many times, the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat facing our country.

    That is why we are working both to stop their proliferation and eventually to eliminate them. Until that day comes, though, we will do everything necessary to maintain our arsenal.

    At the vanguard of this effort, alongside our military, are our nuclear weapons laboratories, national treasures that deserve our support. Their invaluable contributions range from building the world’s fastest supercomputers, to developing cleaner fuels, to surveying the heavens with robotic telescopes.

    But the labs are best known for the work they do to secure our country. Time and again, we have asked our labs to meet our most urgent strategic needs. And time and again, they have delivered.

    In 1939, as fascism began its march across Europe, Asia, and Africa, Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that the Nazis were racing to build a weapon, the likes of which the world had never seen. In the Southwest Desert, under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicists of Los Alamos won that race and changed the course of history.

    Sandia was born near Albuquerque soon after the Second World War and became our premier facility for developing the non-nuclear components of our nuclear weapons program.

    And a few years later the institution that became Lawrence Livermore took root in California. During the arms race that followed the Korean War, it designed and developed warheads that kept our nuclear capabilities second to none.

    These examples illustrate what everyone in this room already knows—that the past century’s defining conflicts were decided not just on the battlefield, but in the classroom and in the laboratory.

    Air Force General Hap Arnold, an aviation pioneer whose vision helped shape the National War College, once argued that the First World War was decided by brawn and the Second by logistics. “The Third World War will be different,” he predicted. “It will be won by brains.” General Arnold got it almost right.  Great minds like Kennan and Oppenheimer helped win the Cold War and prevent World War Three altogether.

    During the Cold War, we tested nuclear weapons in our atmosphere, underwater and underground, to confirm that they worked before deploying them, and to evaluate more advanced concepts. But explosive testing damaged our health, disrupted our environment and set back our non-proliferation goals.

    Eighteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed the nuclear testing moratorium enacted by Congress, which remains in place to this day. 

    Under the moratorium, our laboratories have maintained our arsenal through the Stockpile Stewardship Program without underground nuclear testing, using techniques that are as successful as they are cutting edge.

    Today, the directors of our nuclear laboratories tell us they have a deeper understanding of our arsenal from Stockpile Stewardship than they ever had when testing was commonplace. 

    Let me repeat that—our labs know more about our arsenal today than when we used to explode our weapons on a regular basis.  With our support, the labs can anticipate potential problems and reduce their impact on our arsenal.

    Unfortunately, during the last decade, our nuclear complex and experts were neglected and underfunded.

    Tight budgets forced more than 2,000 employees of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore from their jobs between 2006 and 2008, including highly-skilled scientists and engineers.

    And some of the facilities we use to handle uranium and plutonium date back to the days when the world’s great powers were led by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. The signs of age and decay are becoming more apparent every day.

    Because we recognized these dangers, in December, Secretary Chu and I met at the White House with the heads of the three nuclear weapons labs. They described the dangerous impact these budgetary pressures were having on their ability to manage our arsenal without testing.  They say this situation is a threat to our security. President Obama and I agree.

    That’s why earlier this month we announced a new budget that reverses the last decade’s dangerous decline.

    It devotes $7 billion to maintaining our nuclear stockpile and modernizing our nuclear infrastructure.  To put that in perspective, that’s $624 million more than Congress approved last year—and an increase of $5 billion over the next five years.  Even in these tight fiscal times, we will commit the resources our security requires.

    This investment is not only consistent with our nonproliferation agenda; it is essential to it.   Guaranteeing our stockpile, coupled with broader research and development efforts, allows us to pursue deep nuclear reductions without compromising our security.  As our conventional capabilities improve, we will continue to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons.

    Responsible disarmament requires versatile specialists to manage it.

    The skilled technicians who look after our arsenal today are the ones who will safely dismantle it tomorrow.

    And chemists who understand how plutonium ages also develop forensics to track missing nuclear material and catch those trafficking in it. 

    Our goal of a world without nuclear weapons has been endorsed by leading voices in both parties. These include two former Secretaries of State from Republican administrations, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Bill Perry; and my former colleague Sam Nunn, for years the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

    Together, these four statesmen called eliminating nuclear weapons “a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage.”

    During the 2008 Presidential campaign, both the President and Senator McCain supported the same objective.

    We will continue to build support for this emerging bipartisan consensus like the one around containment of Soviet expansionism that George Kennan inspired.

    Toward that end, we have worked tirelessly to implement the President’s Prague agenda.

    In September, the President chaired an historic meeting of the UN Security Council, which unanimously embraced the key elements of the President’s vision.

    As I speak, U.S. and Russian negotiators are completing an agreement that will reduce strategic weapons to their lowest levels in decades. 

    Its verification measures will provide confidence its terms are being met.  These reductions will be conducted transparently and predictably. The new START treaty will promote strategic stability and bolster global efforts to prevent proliferation by showing that the world’s leading nuclear powers are committed to reducing their arsenals. 

    And it will build momentum for collaboration with Russia on strengthening the global consensus that nations who violate their NPT obligations should be held to account. 

    This strategy is yielding results.  We have tightened sanctions on North Korea’s proliferation activities through the most restrictive UN Security Council resolution to date—and the international community is enforcing these sanctions effectively.

    And we are now working with our international partners to ensure that Iran, too, faces real consequences for failing to meet its obligations.

    In the meantime, we are completing a government-wide review of our nuclear posture.

    Already, our budget proposal reflects some of our key priorities, including increased funding for our nuclear complex, and a commitment to sustain our heavy bombers and land and submarine-based missile capabilities, under the new START agreement.

    As Congress requested and with Secretary Gates’ full support, this review has been a full interagency partnership.

    We believe we have developed a broad and deep consensus on the importance of the President’s agenda and the steps we must take to achieve it. The results will be presented to Congress soon.

    In April, the President will also host a Nuclear Security Summit to advance his goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material within four years.  We cannot wait for an act of nuclear terrorism before coming together to share best practices and raise security standards, and we will seek firm commitments from our partners to do just that.

    In May, we will participate in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. 

    We are rallying support for stronger measures to strengthen inspections and punish cheaters.

    The Treaty’s basic bargain—that nuclear powers pursue disarmament and non-nuclear states do not acquire such weapons, while gaining access to civilian nuclear technology—is the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime.

    Before the treaty was negotiated, President Kennedy predicted a world with up to 20 nuclear powers by the mid-1970s.  Because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the consensus it embodied, that didn’t happen.

    Now, 40 years later, that consensus is fraying.  We must reinforce this consensus, and strengthen the treaty for the future.

    And, while we do that, we will also continue our efforts to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.  

    We know that completing a treaty that will ban the production of fissile material will not be quick or easy—but the Conference on Disarmament must resume its work on this treaty as soon as possible.

    The last piece of the President’s agenda from Prague was the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    A decade ago, we led this effort to negotiate this treaty in order to keep emerging nuclear states from perfecting their arsenals and to prevent our rivals from pursuing ever more advanced weapons.  

    We are confident that all reasonable concerns raised about the treaty back then – concerns about verification and the reliability of our own arsenal – have now been addressed.  The test ban treaty is as important as ever.

    As President Obama said in Prague, “we cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.”

    Some friends in both parties may question aspects of our approach. Some in my own party may have trouble reconciling investments in our nuclear complex with a commitment to arms reduction. Some in the other party may worry we’re relinquishing capabilities that keep our country safe.

    With both groups we respectfully disagree. As both the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, and as a strong proponent of non-proliferation, the United States has long embodied a stark but inevitable contradiction. The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction, particularly if the weapons fall into the wrong hands.

    Many leading figures of the nuclear age grew ambivalent about aspects of this order. Kennan, whose writings gave birth to the theory of nuclear deterrence, argued passionately but futilely against the development of the hydrogen bomb. And Robert Oppenheimer famously lamented, after watching the first mushroom cloud erupt from a device he helped design, that he had become “the destroyer of worlds.”

    President Obama is determined, and I am as well, that the destroyed world Oppenheimer feared must never become our reality. That is why we are pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. The awesome force at our disposal must always be balanced by the weight of our shared responsibility. 

    Every day, many in this audience help bear that burden with professionalism, courage, and grace. A grateful nation appreciates your service. Together, we will live up to our responsibilities.  Together, we will lead the world.  Thank you.  May God bless America.  May God protect our troops.

  • Obama Boosts Nukes

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus.

    On February 1,
    the Obama administration delivered a budget request calling for a full
    10 percent increase in nuclear weapons spending next year, to be
    followed by further increases in subsequent years.    

    These increases, if enacted, would bring the recent six-year period
    of flat and declining nuclear weapons budgets to an abrupt end. Not
    since 2005 has Congress approved such a large nuclear weapons
    budget. Seeing Obama’s request Linton Brooks, who ran the National
    Nuclear Security Administration for President Bush from 2003 to 2007,
    remarked to Nuclear Weapons and Materials Monitor, “I would’ve killed for this kind of budget.”

    Largest Since Manhattan Project

    Obama’s request includes more than twice last year’s funding for a
    $5 billion upgrade to plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production
    facilities at Los Alamos. If the budget request passes intact, Los
    Alamos would see a 22 percent budget increase in a single year, its
    biggest since the Manhattan Project. 

    The request proposes major upgrades to certain bombs as well as the
    design, and ultimately production, of a new ballistic missile
    warhead. Warhead programs are increased almost across the board, with
    the notable exception of dismantlement, which is set to decline
    dramatically. A continued scientific push to develop simulations and
    experiments to partially replace nuclear testing is evident. 

    All these initiatives and others are embedded in an overall military
    budget bigger than any since the 1940s that includes renewed funding
    for the development of advanced delivery vehicles, cruise missiles, and
    plenty of money for nuclear deployments. 

    Linked to START

    This proposed “surge” responds to a December 2009 request
    from Senate Republicans (plus Lieberman) for significant increases in
    nuclear weapons spending. Such increases, these senators said, were necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) to obtain their ratification votes for a follow-on to the START treaty (which expired in December). 

    As of this writing the new treaty remains under negotiation.
    Ratification of any treaty requires 67 votes, a much higher hurdle than
    the 60 needed to break a filibuster. As the 2010 campaign season begins
    in earnest, it remains to be seen if this expansive nuclear spending
    package is anywhere near hawkish enough to buy the necessary votes. 

    Also, key politicians of both parties have pork-barrel interests in
    the nuclear weapons complex, interests not confined by the boundaries
    of their districts and states. In today’s Congress, money and influence
    flow freely across these lines. The contracts at stake are big by any
    standard. Nuclear weapons complex contractors are among the nation’s largest recipients of contract dollars. So far in FY 2010, seven of the top 10 U.S. contractors are nuclear weapons site management contractors or partners.  

    For their part, most Democrats assume — despite a small mountain of
    evidence otherwise — that a nuclear weapons spending surge is genuinely
    needed. Some of the administration officials behind this surge have
    been retained from the Bush administration. Others, like Undersecretary
    of State Ellen Tauscher, are Democratic hawks. There are no doves. 

    Squared with Prague?

    This increase in spending on the nuclear complex does not contradict
    Obama’s public statements, for example in Prague in April 2009, that he
    would “seek” nuclear disarmament. In contrast to Picasso’s famous
    dictum (“Others seek, I find”), Obama has said only that he would
    “seek” disarmament. Despite the powers theoretically available to him
    as commander-in-chief, which encompass every aspect of nuclear
    deployment and procurement, Obama has said nothing about finding disarmament. 

    In many ways the President is building on the rhetorical foundation
    laid in January 2007 by the so-called “Four Horsemen” — George Schultz,
    Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn — who with 16 others laid out their rationale
    for a “world free of nuclear weapons.” These men did not, either in
    their original op-ed or in their subsequent ones, actually advocate any
    but the vaguest steps toward actual disarmament. 

    What they offered instead was aspirational rhetoric that was
    all-too-uncritically received in most circles. Subsequently, three of
    the four supported the Bush administration’s Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) or its equivalent, and Perry co-convened an influential nuclear policy report that called for funding increases, new construction, and replacement warheads. Their op-ed
    last month calling for a big increase in nuclear weapons spending
    brought these rhetorical contradictions sharply into view. Nuclear
    disarmament, even as an aspiration, was missing.

    No New Nukes?

    Administration spokespersons have been quick to say there are no
    “new” warheads under consideration. That is because the word “new” can
    simply never be used in connection with warheads, no matter how many
    changes are involved. Last year’s Defense Authorization Act, authored
    by then-congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Livermore), builds a spectrum
    of potential innovation into the structure of the “Stockpile
    Management” program.

    Last year, the administration requested and received a great deal of
    money for what amounts to a new bomb, mostly for European deployment,
    without the embarrassment of talking about a “new” bomb like George
    Bush did. George Orwell would be proud. 

    These linguistic innovations go back to 1996, when weapons
    administrators and contractors sought a politically palatable path to
    warhead innovation. At that time, Clinton administration bureaucrats
    consciously chose to emphasize themes of “replacement” and
    “stewardship” in describing programs they knew (and privately said at
    the time) would result in new warheads. As attendees at one 1996
    meeting said,
    even “the use of the word ‘warhead’ may not be acceptable.” Linguistic
    cleansing paved the way for this month’s proposed spending surge. 

    Next Step: Congress

    Will Congress, especially the Democratic members of Congress, fund
    these increases? In part the answer depends on how seriously they take
    the several converging crises facing the country and the planet, and
    how seriously they address populist anger about the economy, especially
    in relation to their own reelection prospects. 

    In many ways the proposed nuclear weapons budget, and the defense
    budget overall, can be seen as bold raids on a diminishing pool of
    resources, as well as very real commitments to fading imperial
    pretensions. Nuclear weapons compete directly with the renewable energy
    and conservation jobs funded in the Energy and Water funding bills.  

    Congress therefore has to decide, and citizens have to help them
    decide, between a new generation of nuclear weapons and the factories
    to make them or the greener alternative of energy and climate security
    and the better economic prospects that would ensue.

    Nuclear weapons are an especially dangerous investment for a
    declining hegemon.  The sooner we choose a nuclear weapons path
    involving less and less money, not more and more, the sooner we will be
    able to wake from the hubris and pervasive violence currently
    destroying us.