Obama failed on nuclear disarmament

During the Cold War, barely a week would go by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons.

Not today. Yet, most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not.

When, in 2010, President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one-third, the Republican-dominated US Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be made to spend a trillion dollars on updating and modernising America’s massive arsenal.

Now that chicken is coming home to roost; and a few other chickens too.

Obama’s unexpected legacy is that he has presided over an America that has been at war longer than any previous president.

Moreover, of recent presidents, apart from Bill Clinton, he has cut the US nuclear weapon stockpile at the slowest rate.

The Republican’s extreme right clipped Obama’s wings. Of that there is no doubt, and it made it impossible to negotiate with Russia any further cuts.

At the same time, the counterproductive US/EU confrontation with Russia over Ukraine pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin to use the foolish tactic of talking about the possible use of nuclear weapons and deploy intimidating flights over the airspace of the Baltic Sea.

When Putin was asked, a year ago, if Russia was prepared to bring nuclear weapons into play in the confrontation over Crimea, he replied: ”We were ready.”

Yet, not all can be pinned on Congress or Putin.

Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world, outlined in his famous speech in Prague in April 2009, has come to naught.

“The Prague vision has been empty of calories,” says Bruce Blair, the former air force nuclear launch officer who revealed the tenuous controls on launching that exists in the underground silos that contain long-range ballistic missiles.

Why, for example, has Obama set about cutting the proposed budget for nuclear security when there are 200,000 putative nuclear weapons in the world in the form of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, as well as those already in service?

The cuts will affect the Global Material Security Programme which has the task of improving the security of nuclear materials around the world, securing orphaned or disused radiological sources and strengthening nuclear smuggling detection.

Why is Obama building the Ballistic Missile Defence System (BMDS), based in Romania and Poland?

It is meant to fire “a bullet at a bullet”, supposedly to defend Europe and the US against a nuclear attack by Iran? (Dutch and Danish warships are also being fitted with sensors that plug into the system.)

But one of Obama’s greatest achievements is the nuclear defanging of Iran — an effort that was strongly helped by Russia’s contribution to the negotiations.

Obama and the Pentagon say this is not about Russia. But Russia believes it is.

NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stolenberg says that “many countries are seeking to develop or acquire their own ballistic missiles”.

But which ones?

North Korea? It would not use this flight path.

Or Pakistan and India, which only aim at each other and, in India’s case, at China?

Richard Burt, who negotiated the path-breaking Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia at the time of president George H.W. Bush says “it is debatable whether other countries will go nuclear”.

Stoltenberg also defends the BMDS, arguing that “the interceptors are too few and located too far south to intercept Russian intercontinental missiles”.

Yet, once the system is fully in place, it can be upgraded relatively easily and this is what perturbs Russia. 

Even now it could probably take out in flight Russian short- and medium-range missiles.

No wonder Putin talks the nuclear talk. The system destabilises the nuclear balance.

Jonathan Beale, the BBC’s defence correspondent, recently broadcast an analysis of the system. He concludes that “NATO and the US may risk being accused of not telling the whole truth”.

Recently, a dozen Democratic senators wrote to Obama, asking him to “redouble” his efforts to reduce nuclear threats.

They went on to say that the US should propose again that the US and Russia reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,000 weapons and 500 delivery systems apiece. 

That is less than half than what they currently have deployed.

Burt believes that Washington could be doing more to engage Moscow: “I don’t think we are trying hard enough to bring Putin to the table”.

Obama has only six months left to make his mark.

A deal with Russia could not be negotiated in that time even if he wanted to. But he could emulate his predecessor, George W. Bush, who simply announced he was unilaterally putting 1,000 nuclear missiles on the shelf.

He could also cancel the BMDS.