By BARRY BLECHMAN, Washington
New York Times
February 19, 2010
IN his speech Wednesday at the National Defense University here, Vice
President Joe Biden opened a new offensive in the administration's war
on nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. One near-term
objective is completion and ratification of a new Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia. But the
ultimate goal, he said, remained the peace and security of a world
without nuclear weapons.
In the absence of a roadmap from a Start accord to global zero, one
can only assume that Mr. Biden meant the continued pursuit of similar,
incremental arms control agreements. But piecemeal control efforts
will never work; we have to think more boldly if we are to achieve
global nuclear disarmament.
The idea of achieving nuclear zero through arms control agreements is
nothing new. It has been pursued for nearly 50 years, and it's a tough
slog, practically and politically. Indeed, such agreements take so
long to negotiate and require so much political capital that
presidents rarely achieve more than one. I should know: as a midlevel
State Department official in 1979, I spent six months trying to
persuade Midwestern voters to support that era?s arms-control
proposal, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, known as SALT II.
Wherever I went, I encountered opponents. Some were against specific
provisions; many simply opposed any limit on American power, or wanted
to deal a blow to the Carter administration.
Most people recognized that SALT II was just another baby step toward
halting the arms race and did little to ease nuclear dangers. The
United States and the Soviet Union together possessed more than 50,000
nuclear weapons; the treaty would have barely dented their arsenals.
If nuclear war began, we all would have been just as dead, regardless
of SALT II.
But the problem isn?t just American politics. Piecemeal agreements
between two nuclear powers to reduce, but not eliminate, their atomic
inventories are insufficient; as the United States and Russia
leisurely reduce their stocks, other states are building up arsenals,
and still others are gaining the technical skills to advance their own
programs. Since 1993, when the United States and Russia signed the
last formal arms control treaty, Start II (which was never fully
ratified), India, North Korea and Pakistan have joined the nuclear
club, and Iran may follow soon.
Accelerating nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks have led
diplomats worldwide to embrace disarmament as a long-term goal. At the
same time, they say it is unrealistic to pursue zero weapons in the
near term.
Fortunately, that?s not true. The technical expertise necessary for
air-tight verification has already been developed through past
agreements and international supervision of the countries that have
relinquished nuclear programs. International precedents already exist
for virtually every procedure necessary to eliminate nuclear weapons
safely, verifiably and without risk to any nation?s security.
Here?s how a global nuclear disarmament treaty could work. First, it
would spell out a decades-long schedule for the verified destruction
of all weapons, materials and facilities. Those possessing the largest
arsenals - the United States and Russia - would make deep cuts first.
Those with smaller arsenals would join at specified dates and levels.
To ensure that no state gained an advantage, the treaty would
incorporate "rest stops": if a state refused to comply with a
scheduled measure, other nations' reductions would be suspended until
the violation was corrected. This dynamic would generate momentum, but
also ensure that if the effort collapsed, the signatories would be no
less secure than before.
Critics cite cheating as the main reason to dismiss disarmament,
ignoring that, even without cooperative verification, American
intelligence has detected every past national effort to develop
nuclear weapons before those weapons became operational. Furthermore,
elimination is simpler to verify than any reduction in the number of
warheads. In a disarmament regime, the entirety of the nuclear complex
would be monitored, shielding nothing from inspectors' eyes. Discovery
of a single warhead or kilogram of fissile material in an undeclared
location would blow the whistle.
Moreover, an international verification organization, akin to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, would have the authority to
inspect any site in every country at any time. In addition to routine
monitoring, inspections would be prompted by tips from national
intelligence agencies, a procedure incorporated into three prior
treaties.
Just as important as detecting cheating is enforcement. To avoid the
Security Council?s endless deadlocks, the treaty could establish its
own means of enforcement. For the most serious violations, a
supermajority of signatories would authorize the collective use of
military force to destroy offending sites and even to dislodge the
regime and bring violating officials to trial. The 2007 Israeli
destruction of an illicit Syrian reactor demonstrated the
effectiveness of conventional military strikes in stymieing secret
attempts to acquire a nuclear capacity.
Of course, in the event that a great power chose to opt out of the
treaty and rebuild its arsenal, collective military action would be
unlikely. But at worst, such a shift would just return us to the
status quo ante - the other powers could just as promptly rebuild
their own nuclear arsenals, netting the cheat nothing but the world's
enmity. (Experts agree that the United States could restock its
nuclear inventory in as little as six months.)
This isn?t to say that completing and ratifying the new Start
agreement is not a good idea: the talks and subsequent verification
measures are central to relations between the United States and
Russia, and a treaty would reduce operational warheads on long-range
missiles and bombers by more than one-fourth. The question is what to
do next. Another Start is not the answer. A comprehensive agreement
for phased, verified reductions to nuclear zero is not only feasible,
but far less risky than the ineffective path we have been on for so
long.
Barry Blechman, a fellow at the Stimson Center, a national security
policy institute, is the co-editor of "Elements of a Nuclear
Disarmament Treaty."