BackObama’s discordant concerto
So far, no US leader has been willing to reconsider the concept of a strategic deterrent
Premium(Michael Sohn/AFP)
Every US president in the nuclear era has been terrified of using nuclear weapons (perhaps with the exception of Harry Truman, who ordered their use over Japan in 1945, probably because he was not aware of their cataclysmic impact) and has sought to get rid of them. Of them, Barack Obama has been the most vociferous and sincere in his proclamations to move towards a world without nuclear weapons. But he is perhaps one of the least effective ones in actually reducing the number of these weapons.
Ever since the April 2009 Prague speech, where he outlined an ambitious disarmament agenda, the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal have remained more or less the same as in the Bush era. Obama’s lofty speech at the historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin last week was the latest attempt to revive the faltering Prague agenda.
In his usual oratory before an invited crowd of adulatory Berliners, Obama declared his intention to reduce “our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by one-third" to about a 1,000 warheads and “seek negotiated cuts with Russia so that we can continue to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures". Moscow’s predictable response to this earnest offer can be summed up in one evocative and familiar Russian word: nyet.
In retrospect, Russia’s inconsideration apart, Obama’s discordant Brandenburg concerto was the wrong speech before the wrong audience at the wrong venue.
In the first instance, the speech is premised on the assumption that it is the number of nuclear weapons that determine the Cold War nuclear posture rather than the other way around. Indeed, it is the very dependence on the need to “maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent" that demands a certain size of nuclear arsenal and is preventing further reduction of weapons.
However, no US leader has been willing to reconsider the concept of a strategic deterrent and examine if some other form of mutual restraint can replace it. To be fair, a technologically and militarily weaker Russia is even more wedded to the idea of a nuclear strategic deterrent than the US. In fact, not a single Russian leader (with the exception of Mikhail Gorbachev) has seriously considered a world without nuclear weapons, let alone that without a strategic deterrent. Until the US and Russia can work out a deterrent relationship that is not based on nuclear weapons, they are condemned to be stuck with them.
Moreover, the audience that needs to be convinced of the imperative to move away from the Cold War doctrines and reduce nuclear weapons was not present at Brandenburg; they are mostly in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill in Washington and the corridors of the Kremlin in Moscow. A recently released Pentagon report on nuclear employment strategy of the US highlights not only the centrality of strategic deterrence but also retains the arcane Cold War launch under attack posture.
Finally, the choice of Berlin as a venue 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall indicates how little progress has been made in normalizing relations between the two Cold War protagonists. Had they achieved even a modicum of normality, it should have been possible for Obama to make this speech in the Red Square instead of Brandenburg Gate.
Clearly, the noble idea of a world without nuclear weapons will take root only if the traditional dogma of strategic deterrence is challenged. Until then, the world will have to contend with well-meaning rhetoric and, sadly, the continued presence of nuclear weapons.
The author is a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. He writes on strategic affairs every fortnight. Comments are welcome at otherviews@livemint.com
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