Capitol Hill is buzzing with debate over changes to U.S. nuclear posture that President Barack Obama is rumored to be considering during his final months in office.
At the center of these debates is the potential adoption of a nuclear no-first-use posture; current policy allows first use against nuclear-weapon states, but only under extreme circumstances. Lawmakers from both houses of Congress have made it clear in recent days they hope to see a change in that policy.
Administration officials have largely dismissed rumors that this would happen during the remainder of Obama’s term. Robert Scher, assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities, said during a recent House of Representatives hearing, “There has been no decision within the administration to change the no-first-use policy.”
Even so, National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins said last week that “we will continue to review our planned modernization program, assess whether there are additional steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy, and pursue ways to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime further.”
House and Senate Democrats have called on Obama recently to make several policy changes. Several Democratic members of the House last week sent a letter to Obama encouraging him to use his final months in office to reduce the risk of miscalculation and inadvertent nuclear war, parallel to a similar letter sent during the week by Senate Democrats.
The July 20 letter, signed by Democratic Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Adam Smith (Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Loretta Sanchez (Calif.), and Jackie Speier (Calif.), commended Obama on negotiating the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, retiring submarine-launched nuclear cruise missiles, hosting four Nuclear Security Summits, and containing Iran’s nuclear program through a multilateral deal with the Middle Eastern state.
Urging policies that would decrease the likelihood of accidental nuclear-weapon use and war, the letter encouraged adoption of a no-first-use declaratory policy for nuclear weapons, along with cancellation the U.S. launch-on-warning nuclear posture.
The letter also said that while the United States should retain its nuclear arsenal, “we believe that this [nuclear] modernization plan . . . may be neither affordable, executable, nor advisable.” Instead of new nuclear weapons investments, the letter recommended reducing the number of warheads the U.S. holds in reserve: “the United States does not need to retain nearly 5,000 nuclear weapons in order to possess a strong, reliable, and effective nuclear deterrent.”
Officials estimate that modernizing the nuclear enterprise, encompassing all three legs of the triad, will cost approximately $1 trillion over 30 years, with costs peaking in the mid-2020s.
Smith, one of the signatories of the letter, said in an emailed statement, “I am encouraged that the President is considering further steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war, particularly the risk of triggering nuclear devastation based on miscalculation.”
He added that “affordable nuclear weapons modernization” will be a critical issue for the next administration, “as costs for our nuclear forces will significantly increase reaching nearly 10% of the defense budget and risk short-changing conventional weapon requirements.”
The Democratic Party senators’ letter last week also called for adoption of a no-first-use policy and cancellation of launch-on warning authorization. It also backed canceling the new Long-Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile – something notably missing from the House letter.
Obama’s last day in office is Jan. 20, 2017.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 13 senators earlier this month sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter asking him to reaffirm the Pentagon’s commitment to nuclear modernization.
“We’re on the precipice of this modernization plan, so this is the time to really have the debate,” a House staffer said by telephone this week, adding that these debates over modernization and the costs involved will remain “ongoing for some time.”
The staffer also expressed uncertainty about the future of the nuclear modernization program under a new administration: “I don’t know what the next administration would do with it at all; there just hasn’t been that level of specificity from [the candidates].”
Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center, argued in an editorial Monday in favor of a no-first-use U.S. nuclear posture. However, Krepon said by email, for now, particularly in light of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments indicating he might pull the U.S. back from its commitment to NATO, “the timing isn’t right.”
Stephen Young, senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said by email that the White House is now considering these issues because Obama “knows full well that he did not make as much progress as he had hoped.”
Obama laid out an ambitious nuclear nonproliferation agenda during a 2009 speech in Prague, and succeeded in sealing a arms reduction treaty with Russia and starting the Nuclear Security Summit process. But a number of his aspirations, including U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and enactment of a global fissile materials production accord, remain unrealized.
“I think it is likely that some changes will happen, but just how bold the president will be is not clear,” Young said.
Adopting the no-first-use policy would be a “bold but valuable step,” he said, noting that no U.S. president will opt for first-use. “The risks are simply too great, and the rewards too low, given all the other options that the United States has,” Young said.
He added that the next administration will need to reconsider certain elements of modernization of the nuclear triad, because the current plan to modernize each leg “is not required to keep us safe, and is not affordable in combination with all the conventional priorities the military has.”
Princeton University nuclear security expert Bruce Blair, co-founder of the Global Zero project, wrote last week in Politico in support of the nuclear posture changes and said he believes Obama will announce a no-first-use policy, based on information from unnamed administration officials. Gordon Chang wrote this week in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that a change in no-first-use policy is not a good idea at the moment. “Unilateral changes of this sort should be made only in times of strategic stability,” he said, arguing that this is not currently the case.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a signatory to the Senate letter, said last week by email that the lawmaker “is optimistic” that Obama will take the opportunity in his final months in office to take steps such as adopting a no-first-use policy.