A top adviser to President Barack Obama on Monday cited a lack of Russian engagement as a major obstacle in fulfilling the administration’s nonproliferation and arms control initiatives.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said at the Arms Control Association’s annual meeting that the administration fell short of the goals outlined in the 2009 Prague speech in part due to a political freeze in U.S.-Russian relations.
In his Prague speech, Obama spoke of achieving a world without nuclear weapons through bilateral and multilateral agreements cutting nuclear arsenals worldwide. This began with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which committed the U.S. and Russia to cap their nuclear arsenals at 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers; 1,550 deployed strategic warheads; and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers.
Highlighting nonproliferation and arms control progress over the last several years, Rhodes noted that since the first Nuclear Security Summit in 2010, which brought together world leaders to discuss the threat of nuclear terrorism, 3.8 tons of enriched uranium and plutonium have been removed from over 50 facilities in 30 countries. He also said Russia was a critical part of the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, arguing that a deal would have been unlikely without the Kremlin’s cooperation.
However, “we have not been able to lock in further stockpile reductions beyond New START,” Rhodes said, attributing that largely to “President Putin’s unwillingness to come to the table.” The administration was also unable to secure all vulnerable nuclear material – one of the goals in the Prague speech – also due in part to Russia’s “reduced enthusiasm” for nuclear security initiatives, Rhodes said.
The latest U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile numbers from the Pentagon indicate that stockpile reductions and warhead dismantlements have slowed under the Obama administration. Asked about this downward trend in light of the legacy Obama intended to leave through the goals laid out in his Prague speech, Rhodes said that “the lower you get, obviously, the more complex your reductions get, and that’s partially why it was our determination that we want to pursue more ambitious reductions through a negotiated agreement with Russia.”
Acknowledging that “we’ve not fulfilled our ambition with respect to reductions,” Rhodes said the Obama administration nevertheless set the course for further nonproliferation and disarmament initiatives.
“The goals set by Prague were so big that they could make even historic progress look smaller,” Rhodes said. “We may not achieve the goal of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime . . . but we can set a course and we can move in that direction.”
