By ROBERT R. MONROE
After returning from recess on Sept. 6, the Senate will consider whether to ratify New Start, the nuclear weapons treaty that President Barack Obama signed with his Russian counterpart in April. The treaty has many problems, from being unverifiable to giving Russia virtual veto power over U.S. missile defense, and more. But the Senate should block it for another more important reason: It is the first major step in the implementation of Mr. Obama's broader nuclear strategy. This strategy would gravely weaken American national security.
The Obama administration's nuclear policy is set out in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was released in April, two days before the signing of New Start. The NPR is joined at the hip with New Start, and together they take this country down a dangerous path. For 65 years, the very existence of our nation has depended upon a strong nuclear deterrent. The new NPR wipes out this proven policy, substituting one of weakness in its place.
Mr. Obama's NPR treats nuclear weapons as an evil to be eliminated, rather than as the ultimate foundation of America's security in a dangerous world. The review opens with Mr. Obama's pledge to "seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and "to take concrete steps toward that goal, including by reducing the number of nuclear weapons and their role in national security policy."
Yet nuclear weapons have been our most effective means of avoiding and limiting conflicts, and of achieving our foreign policy goals, since World War II. Nuclear weapons ended the most destructive war in history. For a half-century thereafter they prevented a vastly more devastating war and were a huge factor in deterring proliferation.
By pledging not to develop new nuclear capabilities—including earth-penetration weapons and any new warheads—the new NPR also promises to let our deterrence atrophy. This ignores that threats and technology are changing, and our weapons must keep pace with them.
The NPR further hurts our ability to modernize our deteriorating nuclear arsenal by essentially cashiering the "replacement" approach, which allows for the use of nuclear components based on previously tested designs. And it undermines the reliability and effectiveness of our stockpile by pledging that the U.S. will not conduct any nuclear testing.
Finally, Obama's new nuclear strategy seriously limits our use of nuclear weapons. The NPR has an entire chapter on reducing their role that, among other things, commits us not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—even if they attack us with other weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Obama's NPR amounts to a road map for achieving a position of strategic inferiority. As other states improve their nuclear arsenals, we will be carrying out unilateral nuclear disarmament.
How have we come to this? In essence, because the two elements of Mr. Obama's nuclear weapons policy are mutually incompatible. First, he has established the goal of "a world without nuclear weapons," pledging to take concrete steps to achieve it. Second, he's stated that as long as such weapons exist, the U.S. arsenal will be safe, secure and effective. Yet the NPR—the result of 12 months of intensive work by all relevant elements of the U.S. government—focuses only on the impossible goal of achieving a nuclear-free world. It fails utterly to maintain an effective nuclear arsenal.
The nuclear deterrent that has kept us safe for over half a century cannot be maintained under the Obama administration's limitations. Unless the Senate supports such nuclear disarmament, it must deny ratification to New Start, which is the first step in that direction.
Mr. Monroe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy, was director of the Defense Nuclear Agency from 1977-1980.
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