Tag Archives: nuclear disarmament

The Real Nuclear Weapons Doctrine of the United States

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The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in mid-June 2019 briefly published the Pentagon’s official doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons. The joint chiefs quickly pulled the document — Joint Publication 3-72, Nuclear Operations — from the public website. [But a public copy has been preserved] “Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” the doctrine opines. “Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

The joint chiefs published the nuclear document around the same time that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual 2019 report, detailing the world’s atomic arsenals.  At the start of 2019, Russia, the United States, and seven other countries possessed 13,865 nuclear weapons, SIPRI found. That represents “marked decline” from the 14,465 atomic weapons in world arsenals at the beginning of 2018, according to SIPRI….But the cuts could reverse. New START will expire in 2021 unless both parties agree to extend the treaty. “…

A senior U.S. intelligence official on May 29, 2019 accused Russia of secretly conducting nuclear tests in violation of an international treaty and the country’s own moratorium on such tests….But the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. was skeptical of the general’s claim. “Ashley would only say that Russia had the ‘capability’ to conduct very low-yield supercritical nuclear tests in contravention of the treaty, a capability which Russia, China and the United States have long had. He did not say that Russia has conducted or is conducting such tests.”  Ashley’s allegation is consistent with repeated attempts by Pres. Donald Trump, his administration and his allies in Congress to dismantle existing arms-control regimes by accusing Russia of violating them, thus justifying a U.S. withdrawal from the same regimes and clearing the way for a U.S. arms build-up.

The Trump administration echoed the administration of Pres. Barack Obama in accusing Russia of willfully violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, an accusation Russia has denied. The White House in February 2019 announced the United States’ withdrawal from the treaty, which bans land-based, medium-range missiles in Europe.

There’s irony in Ashley accusing Russia of violating the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which according to the Arms Control Association “prohibits any nuclear test explosions that produce a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction and creates a robust international verification regime.”  “The United States has signed but not ratified the treaty,” the association pointed out. “The most effective way for the United States to enforce compliance with the zero-yield standard is for the Trump administration and the U.S. Senate to support ratification of the treaty and help to bring it into force, which would allow for intrusive, short-notice, on-site inspections to detect and deter any possible cheating.”

Davide Axe, Oops: The Pentagon Just Revealed Its Nuclear Doctrine, National Interest, June 20, 2019

Nuclear Weapons are Here to Stay

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[D]espite the establishment in 2009 of [a process to] discuss multilateral disarmament, not much has happened. The main reason is the chilling of relations between Russia and the West, which predated Russia’s annexation of Crimea. An offer by Mr Obama in 2013 of new negotiations to reduce each side’s stock of warheads by a third was met with stony silence.

More recently Russia has, according to America, violated both the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, by testing a banned missile, and the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 that guaranteed Ukraine’s security when it gave up the nuclear weapons it had inherited on the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Russians are also refusing to attend next year’s Nuclear Security Summit, a meeting to prevent fissile material falling into the wrong hands.

Without further cuts in American and Russian nuclear forces (which account for more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons), China, the most opaque of the P5 power (US, UK, Russia, China, France), will block attempts to get multilateral disarmament talks going. However, Rose Gottemoeller, America’s under-secretary of state for arms control, praises China for its leading role in producing a common glossary of nuclear terminology. This may not sound much, but it is seen within the P5 as essential for future negotiations.

Ms Gottemoeller is also keen to stress that, despite the Russian impasse, America has tried to meet its obligations. It is eliminating “excess” warheads at the rate of almost one a day and closing down old bits of nuclear infrastructure. …It is doubtful whether these modest, incremental efforts will cut much ice with the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons Initiative, a movement supported by civil-society groups and championed by Austria, Norway and Mexico. Faced with what they see as foot-dragging by the P5 (which are modernising their nuclear forces to maintain their long-term effectiveness), the initiative’s backers, some of which want to make nuclear weapons illegal, may question whether working through the NPT serves any purpose…

Another source of friction is the failure to hold the conference on creating a WMD-free zone in the Middle East that was promised in 2010. Israel,…insists that regional security arrangements must precede any talks on disarmament, whereas Egypt says the first step is for Israel to accede to the NPT—a non-starter.

Excerpts from Nuclear weapons: Fractious, divided but still essential, Economist, May 2, 2015, at 54