President Obama recently reached a tentative agreement with the Russian leadership to reduce our two nations’ nuclear arsenals by up to 25 percent. In his April address to NATO, the president described several additional steps to address the nuclear danger. Reducing the risk of an accidental or intentional nuclear holocaust somewhere on our planet should now rise to the top of the national security agenda for Virginia’s congressional delegation.
Let’s face it, U.S. nuclear weapons have been a major contributor to global terror since 1945. Our nation currently deploys 2,200 strategic, and 500 tactical nuclear weapons; twice that many additional warheads remain in storage. We are the only nation ever to attack another country with nuclear weapons; in essence we unleashed terror weapons against civilian targets with the specific intention of breaking that nation’s will to fight.
Of course, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and now North Korea are also armed with nuclear weapons – and several others may soon follow. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the global inventory (excluding thousands of stored plutonium cores and stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium) currently stands at over 23,000 warheads.
Even one nuclear explosion – accidental or intentional – would be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. A single warhead could destroy a city; it would paralyze a nation, cripple its economy, and terrorize the planet. We’ve been very lucky to avoid such a catastrophe thus far. Does anyone seriously believe this good fortune can last forever? We must start taking steps to significantly lower the risk.
First, President Obama should re-submit, and the Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which has languished since 1996. Formally ending nuclear testing would bolster our efforts to limit nuclear proliferation. We can’t expect other nations to give up their nuclear ambitions if we continue to expand ours. The treaty will make it more difficult for current nuclear powers to modernize their weapons, and for near-nuclear states to develop ones of their own. The CTBT would not endanger national security – it is fully verifiable and effectively locks U.S. nuclear superiority into place.
Second, we should accelerate the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program to lock down nuclear materials still stored insecurely in sites throughout Russia. This stockpile offers perhaps the easiest path for terrorist groups or operatives from other nations to acquire one or more bombs. As it is currently constituted, this program will require more than a decade to complete. Congress should cut the red tape that slows the process, and allocate additional funding – by far the best investment we can make to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism.
Third, we can lower the number of nuclear weapons our nation deploys, and lower their alert status. The vast, undifferentiated and lingering destruction of a nuclear explosion is useless as a weapon of war. U.S. military strategy emphasizes precisely the opposite goal – precision-guided strikes that attack specific targets with limited civilian damage.
Using nuclear force against a conventionally-armed enemy is unthinkable. The only possible justification for maintaining a nuclear arsenal is to deter another nuclear-armed nation from striking first. U.S. missiles can accurately reach any target on earth. How many do we really need to serve as a convincing deterrent? We certainly don’t need several thousand nuclear warheads to threaten retaliation against any nuclear-armed adversary. Several hundred would be more than enough to devastate any potential attacker.
Realistically, until all nations can agree to disarm, we probably need to maintain a minimal nuclear deterrent. But we could unilaterally decommission as much as three quarters of our arsenal – and still maintain that capability. President Obama’s proposal of a 25 percent reduction is a start so modest we could do it tomorrow with no decrease in national security.
In fact, each decommissioned weapon will increase security, by lowering the danger of unintended or mistaken nuclear war and simultaneously demonstrating our willingness to settle disputes by peaceful diplomatic means rather than by threat of arms.
Lowering the alert status of our arsenal would also reduce the risk of accidental, unintended nuclear disaster by making it more difficult to launch weapons on a moment’s notice.
Finally, Virginia’s congressional delegation should urge the Obama administration to pursue further diplomatic negotiations to discourage proliferation, and to shrink existing arsenals. In Prague, the president proposed a treaty to end production of weapons-grade fissile material, and a strengthening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Along with an expanded Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, these two agreements would be significant steps back from the precipice of nuclear catastrophe.
Paul Fleisher is an educator and author of more than three dozen books, including Understanding the Vocabulary of the Nuclear Arms Race.
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