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The Connection Between Nonproliferation and Disarmament
By Matthew Fargo
On August 1, the House Armed Service Subcommittee on Strategic Forces held a hearing entitled “Nonproliferation and Disarmament: What's the Connection and What Does that Mean for U.S. Security and Obama Administration Policy?” The Honorable Stephen G. Rademaker, Principal, The Podesta Group and former Assistant Secretary of State; Dr. Kori Schake, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and Ambassador Thomas Graham, Former Special Representative to the President on Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament all gave testimony before the committee. The witnesses were asked to evaluate the United States’ commitments in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, how past U.S. disarmament activity had affected U.S. nonproliferation objectives, and how ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or further U.S. nuclear force reduction might impact American nonproliferation objectives.
Chairman Michael Turner (R – OH) began the proceedings by criticizing President Barack Obama’s policies and actions on nuclear weapons reduction and implying that Russian nuclear forces pose a threat to the United States if they are superior in any way. He said that, “Russia is modernizing virtually every nuclear weapons capability it has.” Though it has been asserted that Russia’s nuclear modernization program may be driven by the desire to compete strategically with the United States, and that this dynamic may be altered with further American nuclear reductions, that possibility went unaddressed by the witnesses. The point that even Russia’s most “modern” nuclear weapons systems have only achieved parity with decades-old American systems in the past few years also went unspoken.
Stephen Rademaker was the first to testify before the subcommittee. He began by enumerating his two primary disagreements with the line of argumentation which tries to link American disarmament and nonproliferation. First, he argued that the value of America’s nuclear arsenal as an instrument of nuclear nonproliferation is often underestimated, and that advocating for the abolition of that instrument may increase the risks of nuclear proliferation. He also said that he knew of no evidence which supported the theory that American nuclear disarmament efforts have before or would in the future lead to increased influence against nuclear proliferation.
Mr. Rademaker then went on to discuss how the nature and type of countries which we fear will be potential proliferators has changed over time. Throughout the Cold War, it was the most technologically and economically advanced nations that were seen to be proliferation risks. Now, nations like Iran and North Korea have become the primary focus of nonproliferation efforts. He discussed how the greatest success of nonproliferation was the concept of “extended deterrence”, whereby the United States has continued to maintain its nuclear weapons to deter both attacks against the U.S. but also against our allies and partners. He deemed this reassurance a form of “active nonproliferation”, and went on to say that, “For proponents of nuclear disarmament, the historical success of extended deterrence is an inconvenient fact.”
Mr. Rademaker concluded his testimony by saying that, “It would be perilous for us to take any steps with our nuclear arsenal that would lead [our allies] to question the reliability of [our extended deterrence] guarantees.” He cautioned that the potential consequences of countries like South Korea or Japan deciding that the United States’ nuclear umbrella could no longer be relied upon would greatly overshadow the extant risks posed by nuclear terrorism and non-state actors.
Next, Dr. Kori Schake delivered her testimony. She started by speaking about the various factors which can lead governments to acquire nuclear weapons. She pointed out that the obvious military advantages gained by the possession of nuclear weapons are often not the principal motivations for nuclear proliferators. Instead, she pointed to “regional distributions of power, national pride, bureaucratic politics, the influence of military in government, and norms of behavior that accord with national identity” as some of the motivations which can shift and interact, driving a state’s decision to develop nuclear weapons. In her view, obtaining nuclear weapons is simply a means, not an end. In addition, because governments do not often reveal their rationale for acquiring nuclear weapons, we are forced to, imperfectly, evaluate their actions after-the-fact.
Dr. Schake then spoke about the two primary means with which the United States has attempted to prevent proliferation: supply side restrictions (such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group) and extended deterrence. These two trends pose an unfortunate contradiction in aims and achievements, however. When the United States extends nuclear deterrence to its allies, it prevents those allies from building their own nuclear arsenals. However, it can also encourage proliferation among their regional rivals.
According to Dr. Schake, further reductions in U.S. nuclear forces may provoke proliferation by tempting adversaries to believe that they could reach parity or even surpass the United States. She finished her statement by warning that, “The countries we are most concerned about acquiring nuclear weapons are countries that believe they deserve to be great powers but are not -- and those are precisely the type of countries that might see advantage in the claim of replacing the United States as the world’s strongest power or foreclosing to it military options.”
Schake’s argument against further reductions in the United States nuclear arsenal conflates two separate issues which, when evaluated separately, do not stand up to scrutiny. The two types of proliferation she alludes two, vertical proliferation – when states which have already acquired nuclear weapons build more or develop more capable weapons – and horizontal proliferation – when new states acquire nuclear weapons – both have very different motivations. Should Iran decide to develop nuclear weapons, it would not be as a result of a desire to become a peer competitor with the United States. Similarly, Chinese nuclear modernization efforts cannot be thought of as proliferation in the context of the NPT if one rejects the interpretation of Article VI as an obligation to eliminate nuclear weapons.
The final witness at the hearing was Ambassador Thomas Graham, who acted as a substitute witness for Professor Scott Sagan. Unlike the witnesses who spoke before him, Ambassador Graham testified in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons as a tool of nonproliferation. He invoked the statements of former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz; former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry; and former Chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee Sam Nunn who advocated in favor of President Ronald Reagan’s dream of nuclear disarmament in several op-ed articles published in the Wall Street Journal.
Ambassador Graham also quoted Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who had stated in 2004 that more than 40 countries likely have the capability to build nuclear weapons, and that, if such proliferation had taken place, nearly every significant conflict could bring with it the risk of nuclear war. Furthermore, with so many nuclear weapons states, it would have become “extremely difficult to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorist organizations.”
Like his colleagues, Ambassador Graham recognized that American extended nuclear deterrence guarantees have contributed to nonproliferation efforts, but he also pointed to the NPT as a principal reason that the darkest fears of nuclear proliferation have not been realized. He stated his belief that the NPT’s success has not been accidental, but that it was based upon a “carefully crafted bargain which incorporated the ‘balanced obligations’ concept” that the non-nuclear weapons states would submit to international safeguards and not acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for the eventual nuclear disarmament of the recognized nuclear weapons states.
Ambassador Graham disagreed with the idea that President Obama’s push for global nuclear disarmament was a fanciful notion and argued that, “Since the mid-twentieth century almost all American presidents have placed arms control and nonproliferation policy high on their agendas.” He ended his testimony by saying that the CTBT, mentioned in preambular clause ten of the NPT, was perhaps the most significant commitment enumerated by the NPT on the nuclear weapon states, and that, along with a peaceful resolution to the contemporary proliferation crisis in Iran, the ratification of the CTBT may prove one of the most critical issues to the long-term survival of the nonproliferation regime.
As the hearing demonstrated, it is widely accepted that the United States policy of extended deterrence has succeeded. Ambassador Graham and Dr. Schake both mentioned that the established norm against the use of nuclear weapons has been to the benefit of both the nonproliferation regime in general and to the United States in particular. While Chairman Turner asked the panel to evaluate the usefulness of the CTBT for the future of nonproliferation efforts, only Ambassador Graham was convinced of its potential utility. The emphasis which Dr. Schake and Mr. Rademaker placed on the relative importance of U.S. extended deterrence guarantees and their usefulness as tools of active proliferation calls into question how valuable the NPT itself has been to the cause of nonproliferation. Similarly, there was not unanimity among the speakers regarding the relative threat posed by the potential failure of nuclear assurance and the risk of stimulating peer competitors to develop nuclear weapons programs of their own. The difficult balance between continuing to support nuclear nonproliferation while continuing to promote American national interests and national security will not be resolved without better understanding of the complex motivations of proliferators.
Matthew Fargo is a research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues. The views expressed above are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Strategic and International Studies or the Project on Nuclear Issues.