Newsweek misrepresents nuclear weapons scholarship

Jonathan Tepperman’s thesis in his September 7th Newsweek article “Why Obama should Learn to Love the Bomb” that “a growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the world more dangerous” badly misrepresents the state of scholarship on this crucial topic.

First, Tepperman references a handful of scholars to make his argument while dismissing the majority who disagree with him. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn opposed this view in two op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and other leading scholars and practitioners participated in a 2007 conference at Stanford University, now memorialized as a 500-page volume, Reykjavik Revisited. Scores of experts are summarily excluded from Tepperman’s article.

Second, Tepperman suggests a robust understanding of how deterrence relates to today’s challenges where none exists. Nuclear deterrence scholar Sir Lawrence Freedman observed a “lost generation” of nuclear weapons specialists in remarks at the Elliott School of International Affairs this spring and Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Kevin Chilton, observed this summer “we have allowed an entire generation to skip class, as it were, on the subject of strategic deterrence.” More scholarship is needed to translate “nuclear optimism” and other Cold War concepts into the Twenty-first Century.

Third, in over 2,700 words on deterrence, not one of them is “accident.” This is a catastrophic flaw in characterizing scholarly debate on nuclear weapons. Kenneth Waltz, cited by Tepperman as “the leading nuclear optimist” underlines this point by co-authoring a book titled The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed with Stanford University’s Scott Sagan who has done decades of careful scholarship to demonstrate the relevance of accidents to nuclear deterrence.

Tepperman’s “iron logic” of deterrence is undermined by a more unstable plutonium logic that can only be understood by the combined lights of physics, engineering, political science, economics, and at least more than a dozen other disciplines that James Doyle of Los Alamos National Laboratory argues constitute “nuclear security science.” The nuclear future ahead of us is long, imperfect, and badly in need of more research and more informed public debate.

Joseph Cirincione to Speak at GW

Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, and a leading expert on nuclear weapons policy and nonproliferation will discuss the Obama Administration’s new nuclear policy.

“Barack Obama’s New Nuclear Policy”
Wednesday, March 25th at 6:10 p.m.
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
1957 E Street., NW room 505
rsvp to dbs@gwu.edu

Obama, Hagel introduce non-proliferation bill

Before leaving town for the Congressional August recess, Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) introduced S.1977, a bill

“to provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.”

The bill builds on the recommendations outlined in the January 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn.

It emphasizes that

"securing nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material at their source is the most direct a reliable way to disrupt efforts by terrorist organizations to acquire such material.”

and urges that

“nuclear weapon states should reaffirm their commitment to Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”

The bill authorizes:
-$50 million for an international nuclear fuel bank (same funding level as proposed in the Senate energy & Water Appropriations bill)
-$15 million annually until 2012 for strengthening the inspection capabilities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as recommended by Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier in Securing the Bomb 2006
-an additional $20 million for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) for FY2008-FY2010
-$15 million for FY 2008 and $10 million for FY 2009 for a nuclear forensics program

It also fulfills an important oversight role by mandating:
-a plan for ensuring that all nuclear weapons and weapons
-usable material at vulnerable sites worldwide are secure by 2012, and annual progress reports
-a report by the National Academy of Sciences on a verification regime for an effective Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty
-two reports on the 2010 NPT Review Conference: one in 2009 detailing objectives, strategy and policies for the Conference and one detailing its outcomes

Lastly, it creates a Commission of 15 Members:
-to provide recommendations on the threat of the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons technology and nuclear terrorism
-to report on efforts to reduce global nuclear arsenals, the development of new nuclear weapons, the need for nuclear energy, and the contribution of existing multilateral entities

At a time when the United States has walked back from many of its commitments under the NPT, this kind of legislation serves as an important reminder and re-affirmation that successful US leadership and long-term US security depend on maintaining a viable and credible non-proliferation and arms control regime in place, which over time will require substantial, prudent and verifiable progress toward the ultimate objective of a world free of nuclear weapons.

As Congress prepares to finalize the funding levels for non-proliferation and arms control issues (in the Defense Authorization bills and the Energy & Water Appropriations bills), several other important and useful bills have been introduced in the Senate recently.

Among them is S.1914, a bill introduced by Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) with Sens. Collins (R-ME), Durbin (D-IL), Kennedy (D-MA), Feingold (D-WI), Casey (D-PA), that would prevent funding for the design and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead, until the new Presidential administration completes a nuclear posture and policy review.