Transparency is one the most important concepts in nuclear weapons policy. Certain nations have the luxury of being transparent about their nuclear arsenals and doctrines, and others do not. Because of U.S. conventional military superiority and because of the large number of U.S. nuclear arms, the administration can be more transparent while not jeopardizing U.S. security. Indeed, President Obama believes that transparency can enhance security and has emphasized this theme in his nuclear security agenda. In contrast, China, Israel, and Pakistan are three countries that have derived benefits from nuclear opacity. Because transparency is a prerequisite to have any hope of achieving global nuclear disarmament, it is worth shining a spotlight on this concept.
In April, the Obama administration published its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Mandated by Congress, this NPR was the third ever in the history of the United States. The first and second were done during the start of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. By openly publishing the NPR, the Obama administration departed from the previous administration, which never officially published its nuclear review. (Some aspects of the administration’s nuclear policy will remain classified such as specific targeting guidance.) Thus, the mere act of open publication demonstrated the commitment to greater transparency.
In fact, the NPR mentions the word transparency 17 times. Several different issues are connected to this term. In general, the NPR’s view is that transparency may help “create the conditions for moving toward a world without nuclear weapons and build a stronger basis for addressing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.”
Concerning proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states, the NPR underscores the need for “much greater transparency into the programs and capabilities of key countries of concern.” “Countries of concern” is code for states with nuclear weapons programs or suspected programs such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria, and perhaps Burma, which may be seeking to acquire nuclear technologies with potential weapons applications.1 Of course, these states have a vested interest in not being transparent. When a state is threatened by more powerful states or is isolated from the international community, it can derive security benefits from opacity and strategic ambiguity.
Similarly, China has benefited from remaining mum about its nuclear capabilities but has reiterated a no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy. The Obama NPR highlights that “the lack of transparency surrounding [China’s] programs – their pace and scope as well as the strategy and doctrine guiding them – raises questions about China’s future strategic intentions.” Because China has a much smaller arsenal than the United States, Chinese leaders understandably have no incentive to broadcast their arsenal’s precise relative weakness. Nonetheless, the NPR rightly points out that a strategic dialogue could serve the interests of both sides by communicating views about strategies, policies, and programs. The objectives are “to enhance confidence, improve transparency, and reduce mistrust.”
Speaking of reducing mistrust, in such a dialogue, the fundamental nuclear strategic question for the United States is whether China is a “small Russia” that has a mutual nuclear deterrent relationship with the United States or whether it is a “large North Korea” that should be defended against.2 While many have argued that it is a strategic fact that China and the United States are mutually vulnerable, it is not clear that this view is accepted consensually within the U.S. government although encouragingly the Obama NPR underscores maintaining “stable strategic relationships” with both China and Russia.
With respect to Russia, the NPR yet again emphasizes transparency. Specifically, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) has “verification and transparency measures” to help “ensure stability and predictability in the U.S.-Russia strategic relationship.” But New START is an evolutionary not a revolutionary treaty in that it is a lineal descendant of the species of arms control treaty spawned in the Cold War. Such treaties dealt with counting weapon delivery systems, including ballistic missile silos, bombers, and submarines: things that are easy to see from satellites and thus easy to verify their dismantlement. Philosophically, New START preserves strategic parity and in effect confirms that the main reason each side still has thousands of warheads is to counter the other side’s warheads. This is despite the statement in the NPR that “Russia and the United States are no longer adversaries.”
Importantly, though, the NPR calls for quick progress toward a follow-on treaty to New START to achieve “substantial further nuclear force reductions and transparency that would cover all nuclear weapons – deployed and non-deployed, strategic and nonstrategic.” But to do so will require addressing Russia’s concerns about conventional force imbalances. Conventional military weakness has spurred Russian military planners to hold onto nonstrategic or so-called tactical nuclear weapons. This is a role reversal from the Cold War when a numerically weak NATO adopted nuclear weapons for potential battlefield use to counter the Warsaw Pact’s forces.
A revolutionary or truly transformative treaty would bring both sides together in the mutual endeavor to defuse the legacy of the Cold War’s bloated arsenals. As leading FAS nuclear analyst Ivan Oelrich recently said to me, imagine “two people locked in a room with a big bomb and they have to agree on a set of procedures for the two of them to work together to disarm the bomb.” Such a treaty would also focus on verifying warhead dismantlement, an area in which FAS researchers have done some path finding work. Laudably, the NPR envisions “a comprehensive national research and development program to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons, including expanded work on verification technologies and the development of transparency measures.” The NPT notes that this verification system is essential to have confidence in detecting possible clandestine nuclear weapons programs.
If the United States can achieve greater arms reductions with Russia and can bring China into the arms control process – two daunting challenges – the NPR then foresees that these endeavors “should include efforts to improve transparency of states’ nuclear policies, strategies, and programs.” To extend such transparency to all states will, however, require fundamental changes in the security environment in regions prone to armed conflict, including the Middle East, and Northeast and South Asia. Israel, for example, will need the utmost confidence that its existence is secure. This example underscores that the fundamental issue is security and that a main driver for certain states to acquire nuclear weapons is to ensure their security.
But even the United States is prepared to use nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear threats under certain conditions. The NPR has carved out exemptions for non-nuclear weapon states not “in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.” The administration wants such a policy to act as an incentive for such states to adhere to their nonproliferation commitments. Moreover, the NPR goes on to affirm that states eligible for the security assurance would not face a nuclear response if they used chemical or biological weapons. But this implies that states that have violated their nuclear nonproliferation obligations such as Iran and possibly Syria could be subject to threats of nuclear weapons use even if they did not have nuclear weapons and if they used chemical or biological weapons. Furthermore, another exemption deals with the special nature of the biological threat. Specifically, the NPR underscores, “Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S. capacities to counter that threat.”
In closing, while the Obama administration’s NPR has made progress in clarifying several aspects of U.S. nuclear policy, these exemptions show that even the United States, with the world’s strongest conventional military, still is not ready to assign nuclear weapons to the sole purpose of deterring others’ nuclear weapons. And it is debatable whether the salience and roles of nuclear weapons have fundamentally been reduced as the Obama administration says it seeks to do. FAS
FOOTNOTES:
1 Robert E. Kelley and Ali Fowle, “Nuclear Activities in Burma,” Report for Democratic Voice of Burma, May 25, 2010.
2 William J. Perry and Brent Scowcroft, Chairs, and Charles D. Ferguson, Project Director, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, Independent Task Force Report No. 62, Council on Foreign Relations, May 2009, p. 45.
