USA/Russland — Defense Officials Clarify Nuclear Review

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Pos­ture Review has laid out a roadmap for the Unit­ed States to fol­low in future nuclear deal­ings, and it also has raised a lot of ques­tions in the pub­lic forum.
Bradley H. Roberts, deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for nuclear and mis­sile defense, and Navy Adm. John E. Rober­ti, deputy direc­tor for strat­e­gy and pol­i­cy for the Joint Staff, spoke with jour­nal­ists on a DoDLive Blog­gers’ Round­table yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy the par­tic­u­lars of the review. 

“It is intend­ed to take con­crete steps now to reduce our reliance – to reduce the num­ber and role of nuclear weapons — while at the same time ensur­ing that we main­tain a safe, secure and effec­tive deter­rence, so long as nuclear weapons remain rel­e­vant,” Roberts said. 

“We are seek­ing to increase our reliance on non-nuclear means of deter­rence, prin­ci­pal­ly mis­sile defense, non-nuclear strike capa­bil­i­ties, and what we’re call­ing coun­ter­ing-WMD, or com­bat­ing-WMD capa­bil­i­ties,” he said, refer­ring to weapons of mass destruction. 

The review will pro­vide a mod­ern per­spec­tive on nuclear deter­rence pol­i­cy, not a removal of nuclear weapons from the Unit­ed States arse­nal, as some have inter­pret­ed. Only one weapon, the Tom­a­hawk Land Attack Mis­sile-Nuclear or TLAM‑N, is being retired, Rober­ti said. 

The pol­i­cy is by no means a reduc­tion of capa­bil­i­ty, Roberts said, but more of a repack­ag­ing that will allow the Unit­ed States to respond to threats appro­pri­ate­ly and, ide­al­ly, to avoid the dis­as­trous reper­cus­sions of using nuclear weapons. 

“A nuclear weapon would be per­fect­ly thor­ough in deal­ing with the mil­i­tary threat,” Roberts said. “We’d like to have oth­er means; we think that would be more cred­i­ble as a threat in the eye of [an ene­my] that we might actu­al­ly employ that oth­er means. 

“Our desire is to have the niche capa­bil­i­ty that we think is cred­i­ble in the eyes of the Kim Jong-Ils of the world,” Roberts said, refer­ring to the North Kore­an dic­ta­tor, “but not to go so far down this path­way that we’re pre­vent­ing fur­ther nuclear reduc­tions by Rus­sia or gen­er­at­ing con­cerns in Rus­sia and Chi­na about the desta­bi­liz­ing impact of these capabilities.” 

But it also uses what Roberts called “cal­cu­lat­ed ambi­gu­i­ty” to allow the pres­i­dent to call for a nuclear strike if needed. 

“The pres­i­dent chose a mid­dle ground because he was not per­suad­ed that the con­di­tions exist today to enable us to safe­ly say that the only pur­pose of our nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack,” Roberts said. 

Pri­mar­i­ly, the report has pro­vid­ed a “roadmap,” as Defense Sec­re­tary Robert Gates put it, to work mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly to reduce nuclear weapons stock­piles around the world. 

“Those who want­ed a con­crete, prag­mat­ic war plan to actu­al­ly reduce nuclear dan­gers and to iden­ti­fy an agen­da of activ­i­ties that can be accom­plished coop­er­a­tive­ly inter­na­tion­al­ly, see a lot in this report,” Rober­ti said. 

The glob­al secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion is dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than it was 20, 40, or 60 years ago, and requires dif­fer­ent meth­ods of defense, Roberts said. 

“In this envi­ron­ment, we have some clear nuclear dan­gers in front of us — dan­gers posed by defi­ant states seek­ing nuclear weapons in defi­ance of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and in vio­la­tion of their treaty com­mit­ments, and for these states we need strong and effec­tive deter­rence pos­tures,” he said. “So long as nuclear threats remain from these states, the nuclear umbrel­la will remain as part of this over­all region­al deter­rence architecture.” 

Although the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent, Roberts said, it’s no less dire. North Korea and Iran have both made efforts to devel­op nuclear weapons pro­grams. The lead­ers of al Qai­da also have stat­ed their intent to obtain and use nuclear weapons. 

“These are all alarm­ing indi­ca­tors,” Roberts said. “They are not proof that there is a nuclear weapon being smug­gled today or tomor­row, but there are alarm­ing indi­ca­tors that require our seri­ous attention.” 

Accord­ing to the review and cur­rent nuclear pol­i­cy, that atten­tion could mean very bad results for any­one pos­ing a threat to the Unit­ed States. While the plan is to low­er the num­ber of nuclear weapons, it is not to shrink the Unit­ed States’ abil­i­ty to respond to aggres­sion, Rober­ti said. 

“Our declara­to­ry pol­i­cy says that if you’re a non-nuclear-weapon state, as defined by the non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty, and you are in good stand­ing, you’re hon­or­ing your non-pro­lif­er­a­tion oblig­a­tions, you are at no risk,” he said. “If you are not in good stand­ing with your nuclear non-pro­lif­er­a­tion oblig­a­tions, the Unit­ed States rules out nothing.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →