Obama's Nuclear Future
The Battle to Reduce the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Begins
Article Summary and Author Biography
After making steady progress on nuclear weapons in the first two years of his presidency, Obama stalled after Republicans waged a fierce battle against ratifying the New START treaty. Recent speeches -- and Obama's picks for secretary of state and secretary of defense -- indicate that he is ready to resume the fight.
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE is President of Ploughshares Fund and the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
Snapshot
Shortly after taking office, Obama traveled to Prague to lay out a vision of a world "free of nuclear weapons." Now the Pentagon has prepared a top-secret memo for the White House, and the president has to decide whether to maintain or shrink the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Now he must decide whether he will uphold the principles he once preached.
Obama in 2010. (Kevin Lamarque / Courtesy Reuters)
After two years of making steady progress in reducing the nuclear risks to the United States, President Barack Obama stalled in those efforts in the second half of his first term. Recent speeches and press reports indicate, however, that he is trying to revive the endeavor. With a new national security team in place, an emerging consensus forming around the need to reshape the nuclear arsenal, and budget realities forcing a reassessment of the size of the U.S. stockpile, Obama may well be positioned for success.
When Obama came into office in 2009, he was ready to move beyond the United States’ Cold War nuclear posture, which calls for stockpiles that “are much larger than required for deterrence today and that have scant efficacy in dealing with the main contemporary threats to U.S. and global security,” as a 2012 report from Global Zero put it. His first nuclear policy review, finalized in April 2009, thus focused on preventing nuclear proliferation, securing all existing stockpiles (to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists and other nonstate actors), and reducing global arsenals. Each element of the policy was designed to reinforce the others: drawing down obsolete arsenals would help foster international cooperation, which the current nuclear powers needed to stand united against new nuclear states and to secure existing bomb materials. These developments, in turn, would promote a security environment comfortable enough for the current nuclear states to continue reducing their stockpiles...
