OBAMA'S NUCLEAR AGENDA ONE YEAR AFTER PRAGUE

Transcription

1 OBAMA'S NUCLEAR AGENDA ONE YEAR AFTER PRAGUE MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2010 WASHINGTON, D.C. WELCOME/MODERATOR: David Sanger Chief Washington Correspondent The New York Times SPEAKER: George Perkovich Vice President for Studies Carnegie Endowment Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

2 DAVID SANGER: Good morning and welcome to the Carnegie Endowment. I m David Sanger of the New York Times, here with George Perkovich, who you all know well, from Carnegie, and the topic matter today is the Nuclear Posture Review, which should be out imminently from the administration. So, George, as usual, your timing is perfect. We thought what we would do today is I would just start with a conversation with George on the basics of this and all of you should have this Carnegie report that George has turned out, which I just read last night, and I have to tell you and I would say this even if I wasn t sitting here next to George (laughter) is the single-best thing I have read sort of summarizing how each country is likely to react not only to the posture review but to the overall strategy that the president is laying out. And I cover this stuff for a living and learned a lot from the report. So I commend it to you and suggest that you steal many of them for your colleagues. [1:18] George, I thought I would start off before we got to the broader question of the president s agenda I guess a year to the day since the Prague speech, right? He gave the speech a year ago. I thought I would start off just with a narrower question on the posture review because it s the first thing we re going to see in this week, really a month, of rapid-fire nuclear setup. And just for those of you who are not familiar with it, there will be the posture review, and then the president is going to Prague to sign the START treaty. He returns for the Nuclear Security Summit, which will be I guess starts Monday night and proceeds through Tuesday and may bleed over into Wednesday a little bit. And then next month is the NPT review in New York, the once-every-five-year review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, at which the Obama administration will have its first chance to really try to close the loopholes in the treaty. So, our effort today is going to be to try to sew all of these together into one cohesive whole, but let me start with the posture review since it is the first thing up. In an era where strategic weapons for the declared nuclear states play less and less of a role, and in a time when we are really more worried about rogue states that either don t have weapons yet but are trying to get them, or have just a few, like North Korea, why do we even care about a Nuclear Posture Review anymore? Why are we still playing with this relic of the Cold War? [3:17] GEORGE PERKOVICH: Well, I mean, it s kind of a flip answer but I think, you know, there is a big truth in it, which is because you have the forces. I mean, you still have thousands of nuclear weapons. You have three nuclear weapons laboratories. You ve got a large infrastructure. You ve got Air Force and Navy units, large commands, whose job it is to operate these forces. You ve got a very large operation out in Omaha whose job it is to plan the strategy and the targeting and so forth. And therefore, you have to both rationalize to them, explain to them why they re important, what their job is, and also give guidance to them. So, it seems peculiar and I think it s, you know, somewhat implicit in your question I mean, this happens a lot, because I work on this stuff for a living. You re in a bar or you re at a wedding or someplace, you know, out in the country, and they ask what you do and you say, well, it s pretty hard to explain.

3 And then, you know, you start talking about nuclear weapons and then they say, but I thought, you know, we pretty much got rid of them. And you say, well, no, actually we ve still got thousands of them. And you take people through it, and then they just say they re not interested but they just say, I m really glad you re working on that. (Laughter.) And that s kind of it. So, I think that s often how the nuclear weapons complex feels too, including the Air Force and the guys who work on it. And so the posture review is way, every five years, for the president and the secretary of defense to say, we re really glad you re working on this and here is how we want you to think about it and be guided. [4:59] MR. SANGER: Well, this is great because it s also answered the deeper question, which is, what do all of us nuclear geeks talk about in bars? (Laughter.) So there you have it. Okay, so the last posture review was January It was three months after 9/11. It was the first time that the Bush administration had a chance to put its stamp on this issue. They never issued another one through the rest of their administration. If you had to guess the top three or four differences between what we re going to see in coming days and what we saw in 2002, what would they be? MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I think the main difference will be that this posture review will state, as the top objective and concern of U.S. nuclear policy, the prevention of proliferation and terrorist use of the nuclear weapon. That was always well, I mean, in past posture reviews it was kind of mentioned as important but it was kind of like that s what other arms of the government do and our posture review is about deterrence and, you know, not quite warfighting but deterrence, but it was pretty manly stuff, and proliferation would be done elsewhere. This posture review, I think, will put the proliferation and counterterrorism thing right at the top, which is a very big change in terms of that what follows from that is, you know, A, you talk about nuclear weapons a little bit differently because if, on the one hand, you re trying to dissuade other states from thinking these are things that they should want and that are sources of status and you re also trying to delegitimate terrorist use of nuclear weapons, then you ought not to really be celebrating them yourself and your own posture review shouldn t be really beating your national chest saying, you know, we ve got these great weapons; they re fantastic; they deter everything, and better watch out. If you mess with us, you know, we ll threaten to use them. [7:15] That doesn t fit so well with an agenda of nonproliferation and counterterrorism right at the top. So that s a pretty big switch. And, by the way, I mean, just you made me think of it. The Bush posture review was misinterpreted in a lot of ways but I think many people in the Bush administration would admit that they caused the misinterpretation too. In other words, they tried to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. posture in that posture review, but they wanted to do it in a very macho way, and so they invented what they called, quote, the new triad, all right? [7:52] So the longtime triad meant, you know, we have an air-based, a land-based and a sea-based nuclear posture, and that was the triad. They said, well, we have a new triad, and it was nuclear weapons were just a corner of the triad and then they had basically an infrastructure capability and then a conventional force capability.

4 What they were trying to say was that nuclear weapons were now basically a third of our overall deterrence posture, which is a reduction of the role of nuclear weapons, but they were so macho about it for other reasons that no one heard it that way. And so I think this posture review, learning from that one, will try to be more consistent with the president s message, and putting nonproliferation and other things at the top is part of that. And so it will say, yeah, we have nuclear weapons, because as the president said in Prague, as long as others have them, we re going to need them, and we re going to be good stewards for them, we re going to take care of them, but that s not the thing they re leading with. MR. SANGER: It s interesting because if you think about the division of the new triad weapons, infrastructure and then conventional weapons and you think about what President Obama has talked about so far, which is weapons as a diminishing number, infrastructure, building up the labs, and conventional weapons where he has sort of revived the prompt global strike conventional idea, although he has amended it in a considerable way, it s basically the same new triad. It s the old new triad. MR. PERKOVICH: I think there will be differences in that he ll go significantly further in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in declaratory policy, the way of talking about it, but I think you re right about the structure, and partly that s look, I mean, the Bush people weren t idiots. I mean, you know, they were looking at a modern world and figuring out how to adapt it. They just trapped themselves in their own domestic imperatives and rhetoric and so they didn t get credited with it. And, similarly, you know, the people doing the posture review and the apparatus that s there strategic command, that s continuity; Secretary Gates, the professionals who work on this stuff. So there s nobody who s going to no kind of Robespierre who comes in and says, all right, off with their heads; we re going to do it totally differently. So there will always be continuity. And I think that s right; it will be a question of the emphasis and the overall project for which, you know, the president will say that we have nuclear weapons. [10:35] MR. SANGER: You ve mentioned declaratory policy, so let s turn to that for a moment. During the Bush administration, somewhat surprisingly after 9/11, there was no declaratory policy on the question of how you would deal with a country that slipped nuclear material and nuclear technology to another nation until the 2006 North Korean nuclear test, and then the president showed up the next morning and issued a declaratory policy in which he said that I can t remember the exact wording but it was along the lines of North Korea would be held accountable deliberately vague phrase if its material or technology ended up in the hands of the terrorists or another state. You then saw Secretary Gates issue pretty close to the same wording after the second North Korean nuclear test. Is that our new declaratory policy? Is it going to be different? [11:42] MR. PERKOVICH: There s so many ways to respond to that because, I mean, I think those kinds of statements are very rarely aimed at the state ostensibly you re speaking about. In other words, that really wasn t a communication to the leader of North Korea after that test; it was a communication to the American people, to the

5 Congress, to the Japanese, to the South we re doing something; don t worry, you know, and we re tough and we re defending you and so on, because, A, if you were really serious about it and when you re really serious about communicating with states like that, you send them private messages. Number two, there is no reason to actually think either the North Koreans or the Iranians, for example, believe what the U.S. says. If you really wanted to communicate to them, you d probably do the opposite and say, oh, no, it s fine; you know, go ahead and transfer nuclear weapons. And then they would say, ah, this is a trap they re setting for us. And so that kind of communication is reassurance and political you have to do something politically. I think that any state that is a candidate to transfer these kind of weapons to others will be making you know, it will do those things, not based on what the U.S. says would happen or not but on a whole bunch of other factors that the U.S. understands pretty well, and that there are actual problems with those kinds of declarations, because one of the things that the government and others try to do is to cooperate with states all the states that have fissile materials that could go into weapons. You would like to we would like to produce a database much like the fingerprinting database that the FBI and INTERPOL have so that you could get samples of the fissile material, the highly enriched uranium or the plutonium they produce, have it all on a database so that if a terrorist nuclear weapon goes off someplace and in the evidence that you collect you can match it better to the source. [13:54] Well, that s hard to do, by the way, but there s a lot of work being done on it. One question is, how willing will all the states be to give you the fingerprints if they think you re going to nuke them in response or if they think your response that you ve already promised your Congress and your public is going to be this very, very military, instantaneous response, how much do they want to cooperate in providing the fingerprints? Now, a country like Japan, fine; it s an ally. They re not going to be giving nuclear weapons to terrorists. They know we re not going to bomb it. What about a country like Pakistan, which is one that we worry a lot about, has a lot of the fissile materials, is in a neighborhood where we worry that the terrorists are trying to get them. How do you set up cooperation with a country like Pakistan to give you those, basically, fingerprints? I think you have to be, you know, careful about I mean, again, that would happen privately and so on and so forth, but I don t think you want to be going out and blustering about this because, again, the states that you would care about Syria, Iran, North Korea if you really want to get to them, you send the message privately. [15:07] MR. SANGER: Your mention of Pakistan takes us right to your report, and I actually thought that some of the most interesting things you had to say in here about the reactions to President Obama s Prague speech were contained in the India-Pakistan section of it. You mention, for example, that Pakistan has opposed the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, or even discussions that would lead up to more of that. You mentioned in here that Pakistan and India are both engaged in significantly increasing both the size and sophistication of their arsenals.

6 So, you re in a metaworld right now where you ve got the president saying, we all have to build down; we all have to reduce our reliance. And you have two countries, both of whom we declare to be significant allies, who are going in the other direction. If you re President Obama, how do you deal with that, and what is the how do you break that dynamic? MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I think that actually there is what I suggest at the end of this paper, and it s just a suggestion, but there is the elements actually of a grand strategy in what the president s pursuing, and neither he nor his administration have actually put it together and articulated it this way. There is the nuclear agenda, which we re talking about, and where India and Pakistan pose arguably the hardest or the second-hardest difficulty. But there s also the regional security agenda, which I m sure the president, contrary to some of his critics, understands that you have to resolve these regional conflicts and tensions that are producing demand for nuclear weapons if you re ever going to get rid of those weapons. I think the president gets that. [17:03] Well, so what s he doing? One of the big foci of the administration is the Afghanistan-Pakistan-India relationship. Now, you can t speak of them in the same sentence because India, for understandable reasons, has wanted to be kept out of kind of the Af-Pak formulation, but the administration has spent a lot of time and effort working on both its bilateral relationship with India but also in reassuring Pakistan, for example, that if it moves forces away from the East, where they re deployed against India, to the West to deal with Afghanistan, that India won t take advantage of that and that the U.S. can give Pakistan some reassurance of that. MR. SANGER: In fact, India isn t taking advantage of that. India instead is going off with breeder reactors on the civilian side MR. PERKOVICH: Right, which is MR. SANGER: and production [17:56] MR. PERKOVICH: which is a big right, which is a huge problem that the Pakistanis will remind one another of. So, on the one hand the administration is trying to reassure Pakistan at the level of conventional military insecurity that India won t take advantage of them. On the other hand is the problem that you point out, which is that the nuclear cooperation agreement that the Bush administration initiated with India does greatly increase India s capacity to produce nuclear weapons if India chooses to. And so the Pakistanis look that that you re right and they say, this is why we can t agree to stop producing more material, because you guys helped the Indians get into a situation to produce a lot more. It s your fault, so therefore we re not going to stop. And so that has complicated it, but I think the ultimate issue is actually less the nuclear in this case and more the conventional and subconventional competition between India and Pakistan. And the administration is trying to work on that, but it s the hardest case, I think.

7 MR. SANGER: It is the hardest case. And right after that comes Iran and the Middle East. And you mention in your paper here that a core issue in the Middle East is that the Israelis of course still won t acknowledge their nuclear arsenal. You can t begin to discuss building down or creating a nuclear-free Middle East or any of the other words of assurance that the Arab states and Iran are either looking for or seeking to exploit, depending on your point of view, without the beginning of an acknowledgement of the Israeli force. So, if you re President Obama, who himself, I don t think, has ever really talked about Israel s nuclear weapons, as most American officials do not, how do you deal with that? MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I m like a Catholic Sunday school dropout. I ve never studied the Talmud but I can be Talmudic about these things. I actually don t think that you have to ever I m not saying you shouldn t but I don t think acknowledgement or public discussion of Israel s nuclear arsenal is necessary actually to eliminate that capability, much in the same way that South Africa s nuclear arsenal wasn t discussed or acknowledged until after it disappeared. [20:25] That you could have discussions and I think this is more likely actually how it would happen you can have discussions about transferring, over time, all the fissile material in the Middle East or the world under international safeguards without ever mentioning nuclear weapons. And then, ultimately, what nuclear disarmament is, or one of the things that nuclear disarmament is, is the taking of all plutonium and highly enriched uranium and putting it under international safeguard. So that s doable. I think, by the way, that a state could speaking of the Fissile Material Cutoff negotiation, which you brought up and which Pakistan resists Israel doesn t like it either but they could join without ever admitting having nuclear weapons because basically you would stop producing more fissile material. You would have [21:19] MR. SANGER: If they were willing to live with whatever the size of their arsenal MR. PERKOVICH: with what they had, right. MR. SANGER: Right. MR. PERKOVICH: And so that would be a significant nonproliferation and arms control step that states can undertake without necessarily having to say this is how many nuclear weapons we have. But I think in general, that question has always been very, very difficult for U.S. administrations who don t want to talk about it. I think that s a mistake, though it doesn t require admitting Israel s nuclear weapons. I think the mistake is not welcoming, for example, an Egyptian proposal to have an international conference on the topic, which you can formulate in various ways. But there I mean, we ve written about this here at Carnegie. I mean, there the idea would be, yeah, all the states in the region who are relevant, which includes Iran, which includes Saudi Arabia, which includes Syria, which includes Lebanon and so on, they all have to be at that conference before it starts. And so you welcome the creation of a conference. You set up a table with all the placards, and if you say if Iran and Saudi Arabia and Libya and all these states are prepared to sit down with Israel and the United States and

8 others and start engaging these issues, let s do it. Well, that s de facto recognition, in a sense, which gets you, you know, a significant way down the road in terms of the peace process. If the states in the region were willing to do that, why would we think that s not a good idea? MR. SANGER: Before I open this up, let me just take you to a very interesting ending you had to your paper called The Challenge at Home. It begins, for those of you that have the paper, on the bottom of page 11. And you make the point that, difficult as it will be for President Obama, because very few other countries, with the exception of Britain, have sort of lined up behind his broad Prague initiative. He s got a problem here at home as well. It takes two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty. He doesn t have two-thirds of the Senate. Health care showed you just how fragmented the whole relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch is right now. [23:40] And yet, in order to persuade the rest of the world that he is making significant progress, he s got a big lineup of things that he s got to go land and get through Senate approval the START treaty; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which President Clinton tried and failed to get through; the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, if you could get through all of these other objectives. And you will hear a fairly familiar complaint from many on the Hill who will say this makes America weaker at a time that the Iranians appear to be seeking weapons, the North Koreans are testing weapons. At a time that everybody is worried about proliferation in the Middle East, you would be going in the other direction, and so forth a very easy thing to do in short sound bites on evening television or cable television. So, if you were having to design a way to get this through the legislature, get this through the Senate, what would that be, and what do you think the prospects are this year for START and CTBT, which would be the two right up on the list? [24:53] MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I mean and this is what I tried to talk about in the piece, and partly to help inform or remind people around the world who have these very high expectations of President Obama, as many here do, of basically the constitutional impediments. And it s not an excuse in a sense that what happens is when we travel, when you travel and you go and you talk to other countries and you re talking in Iran and they say, well or Russia or something, and everybody says, well, you have to understand, we have domestic politics is why we can t do this. And then Americans tend to be, oh, poff (ph) with your domestic politics; just do it. MR. SANGER: Right. MR. PERKOVICH: And then they come here and we say, you have to understand; we ve got domestic politics. We do have we have a constitutional problem, which is the one that you identify where the I mean, the Genocide Convention was invented actually at the Carnegie Endowment in 1948 and took 48 years for the Senate to ratify. It was an American

9 MR. SANGER: You guys were on fast track. (Laughter.) [25:52] MR. PERKOVICH: Right. Yeah, that was quick, and the CTBT I think there s zero chance that the CTBT will be ratified in 2010, and I think the chances in 2011 are very difficult, for reasons that are partly in answer to your question, which is that the president, or the administration, I should say, in order to facilitate ratification of the START treaty, has paid a big fee to the nuclear weapons laboratories, basically, and the Department of Defense to upgrade the infrastructure of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. And this is in the budget and the president has talked about it and so on. That upfront payment has been made because the administration thinks it s in the interests of the country and it s the responsible thing to do. Some of us would have said, well, it would have been better to do that in return for a vote on the CTBT. They re doing it basically at the same time as START, which puts Senator Kyl and other Republicans in the position, when the CTBT comes around, to say, there is nothing you can do to pay us off for this because you already paid to get START, which I think will be ratified and I think it will be ratified pretty easily because I would argue that the Republicans actually need an arms control treaty so that they re not opposed to all of them. They get this one. They got the big payment for it. [27:22] MR. SANGER: And this one is very much like the Moscow Treaty, which they voted for overwhelmingly. MR. PERKOVICH: Which they voted for, and so I think they ve played it smartly and they ve gotten paid off very handsomely. Oh, they ve been overpaid for it. They re going to get it. And then after that they re going to say, no more treaties. And then they can say, in political campaigning, we re not opposed to all treaties because, look, we just ratified this one, but the next one is a bad treaty, and the next one ad infinitum will be a bad treaty. And I think the rest of the world is not going to understand this very well, and the rest of the world looks on the CTBT, for example, and says, wait a minute; you guys did like 1,300 nuclear weapon tests, the Chinese did something like 45, and somehow you can t live with the test ban treaty but these other guys are prepared to do it, and you re sending all this money to your weapon labs and somehow they can t vouchsafe this? Or the argument I make is, Israel has either tested zero or one time. They re for ratifying the CTBT, so how is it that they can be confident in their deterrent and somehow we couldn t with the CTBT? And I never get a good answer to that question, but you don t have to have a good answer to get 34 votes to block ratification of a treaty. MR. SANGER: And it s not like next year he ll have more senators MR. PERKOVICH: Exactly. MR. SANGER: than he s got today. MR. PERKOVICH: Right. Right.

10 MR. SANGER: Great. Well, let us open this up to questions. When you do ask a question, please tell us who you are and please make the question a question. Let s start over here. [28:56] Q: Hi. Mary Beth Sheridan from the Washington Post. Thank you. To return to the Nuclear Posture Review, when you said that one of the main changes will be the emphasis on the problem of proliferation, terrorist, et cetera, beyond a rhetorical change, how do you see that turning into what practical effects will that have? Thanks. [29:18] MR. SANGER: Well, I think the I mean, A, the rhetoric is important and so that will be there because, like I say, the way you talk about nuclear weapons will change and the value that you try to put into them will change, but I think the Nuclear Security Summit coming, you know, six days later is also going to reflect that strategy. In other words, that summit is about securing weapons-usable fissile materials, which is, A, we believe the only way terrorists would get nuclear weapons is if they could acquire that material. It s not believed they can produce it themselves. So that is an unprecedented effort to invite heads of state from 40 or more countries to address just that issue of securing fissile materials. And there is going to be money behind that and there are going to be other programs there have been I mean, this has been bipartisan for years a U.S. effort, but there is going to be more emphasis on that. That s a part of a nuclear strategy, though it s not the part that the Pentagon necessarily does or that STRATCOM does. It s the part that s not done by our nuclear weapons, which is part of the point of the overall effort then would be, say, nuclear strategy isn t just performed by nuclear weapons; it s performed by all of these other attributes of U.S. power and government. So that s another example that I would give. Q: Tesi (sp) Shaffer from (Cross talk.) MR. SANGER: There s a microphone coming. [30:51] Q: Sorry. Tesi Shaffer from CSIS. George, you just gave a zero probability of CTBT ratification in 2010 I certainly wouldn t disagree with that and the odds for ratification after that don t look great. So, what is a path forward that doesn t rely on the CTBT, since it looks to me like CTBT is going to be in roughly its present limbo for a good long time? MR. PERKOVICH: Well, I mean, I think the reality is actually I just started a phrase saying the reality is and then I don t know what the reality is, because I was going to say, no one has tested since 1996 but that doesn t include India and Pakistan in 98. So those were the last nuclear tests and then North Korean in 2000.

11 So, what I was going to say before reality intruded was that we already have kind of a global moratorium where, in fact, we do if you exclude North Korean the five NPT nuclear weapons states did agree and have agreed to have moratoria on nuclear testing. India then voluntarily put a moratorium on it and I think Pakistan has seconded that. That would be, I think, the only way that you can go forward right now anyway is to say, this is a norm, this is the acceptable practices is we don t test these things, and in lieu of having a formal treaty to that effect, I think that s the best you can do. MR. SANGER: There s a mike coming around right behind you. [32:34] Q: Hi. Jonathan Weisman with the Wall Street Journal. You haven t talked about the START treaty itself, and I would like you to just address what significance you think it has for the nuclear arsenal specifically but also in the broader nuclear arms control agenda. MR. PERKOVICH: That s a good question. Let me start with the latter part. In terms of its broader significance I think its broader significance is much greater than its narrow technical significance. The broader significance comes in several forms. One is in the U.S.-Russian relationship, it really does give traction to moving forward, in a way that s anachronistic, but in many ways Russia is anachronistic. In other words, it was a great power. In the mind of the leadership and much of the population, it still is or wants to be a great power. The real basis for it now that oil and gas prices are lower is nuclear weapons. It also has a cadre of officials and experts who invented the language of nuclear arms control, are very good at practicing it. So, engaging with those people in that language is a way for Russia to feel, in a sense, better about itself, taken more seriously, which is important for the leadership, and in a positive direction because you re dealing with legally binding instruments, not just informal agreements. I think that s good for everybody but it also the more you have the Russians kind of wanting to invest in legally binding agreements and instruments and the U.S. not being the one for a number of years saying, no, we re not that interested in legally binding agreements, I think in, again, a kind of a cultural normative way, that s useful. And Russians would say Alexei Arbatov was here on this platform on Thursday saying actually that the new Russian military doctrine released in February actually temporizes the language regarding nuclear weapons and narrows the declared kind of use that Russia might put to nuclear weapons. And he attributes that to the Russian establishments seeing the change Obama was making and wanting to be part of that or to encourage that. So in that kind of broader sense, I think it s important. [35:17] I think, similarly, in the NPT process, the process of the broader international community, this is a welcome correction and development, even if the number of weapons being cut doesn t seem that great. The idea that the U.S. and Russia are completing negotiations, agreeing to legally binding treaties is somewhat reassuring. And in many ways that s an overreaction to the Bush administration in the sense of how much the rest of the world really, really didn t like the Bush administration. And I would argue, and did over those years, that a lot of that was unfair or also a misinterpretation of some of the stuff that Bush administration was doing. But it was a fact.

12 And so this is seen as a big correction to that unhappy time for a lot of the rest of the world. And so they say, okay, it s moving in a positive direction, which, by the way, is an important reason not to bring the CTBT up until you know you ve got the votes. In other words, it would be very, very bad for international politics and U.S. standing in the world to lose a vote on CTBT ratification. MR. SANGER: A second time. MR. PERKOVICH: A second time. MR. SANGER: Yeah. [36:27] MR. PERKOVICH: And so then I think that also slows it down because the administration is not going to do it until they think they ve got a big vote, which would take more time. I hope that answers your question. MR. SANGER: Let me follow up on Jonathan s very good question, though, because there s a sense about the START treaty that the cut was fairly modest. As we and others have written, you know, you count every bomber as one weapon when they hold six to a dozen more in SORs (ph). So, you might not really have to cut that much at all if you really wanted to find a way to make this a non-reduction. And yet, there was a sense that it was so hard to get that the next treaty, which is the one that President Obama would really need, something that might take you down below a thousand weapons, the Russians simply aren t going to do, given their own vulnerabilities and so forth. So, tell us what we learned from this START negotiation that informs the question of what it would be to get the treaty that the president really has in mind. MR. PERKOVICH: Well and I suggested in this paper, I mean and this goes to the domestic politics thing that we re talking about. I mean, I think it s very, very hard to get ratifications by the U.S. Senate for anything that requires significant change in the way that we think or act. And you can look at the health-care system that way or you know, it was designed to be conservative with a small c. [38:04] The START treaty fits that bill because it doesn t require any change in thinking or acting. What I mean by that is you and the military will tell you you don t have to change our strategy of deterrence. You don t really have to change the targeting. You don t change the triad, so you still have the bombers, the submarines and the land-based missiles, even though people in the Air Force are saying they ought to get rid of the bombers and we can talk more about the counting rule but it doesn t change any of that. And then, similarly, for the Russians it doesn t require a change in the way that they think about going about deterrence, and in fact, it doesn t require them to cut stuff that they weren t going to cut already. And you re right; it was relatively hard to get for something that actually doesn t require major change in, I would argue, any way. The next treaty that people allude to, the U.S. would want things that require change. For example, you would want we would want, the Europeans would want to include Russian so-called tactical nuclear weapons.

13 And I would argue there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon anyway. I mean, you know, all nuclear weapons, if they go off, have strategic effects. But anyway, you want to include those. You want to verify warhead dismantlement. That s never been done. That would require a level of intrusiveness that the Russians have always been averse to. [39:45] You would want to get reductions you mentioned a thousand. Let s say that s the number, or 999 if you re a liberal and, you know, each digit matters. The Russians have said anything below, you know, 1,200 if the U.S. still has missile defense, it s unconstrained; we, the Russians, can t do. So, from a Russian point of view, you don t get to numbers like that without then some kind of limitation on national missile defense not theater missile defense, which is an important distinction but protection of the continental United States. Well, we already know from the discussion in Washington with the Republicans saying very clear, if there s any limitation on missile defense, forget it; this is not going to be ratified. Well, the Russians would say, to go the next step you have to do exactly the thing that the Senate has said we will not consider. So, for those reasons as well as the ones that you mentioned, David, the next one requires big changes in thinking on both sides. You probably, at some point, want to get rid of the triad, which, you know and then the states that have bases are going to be unhappy about losing that money, and so that becomes much more difficult. And, moreover, given that this treaty, the new START treaty, if ratified, has a 10-year life span, you know, the likelihood is that you know, that Russia would want to wait a bit before engaging in that kind of negotiation. One last point that Alexei made Alexei Arbatov made here, which I hadn t thought of but it s very important, I think, is that Russia is spending what money it has for our nuclear forces to modernize its strategic forces. And so, at the end of the 10 years of the START treaty, almost everything they would have under that treaty would be new and modernized. So then the question is, if you ve just paid for it, are you going to want to eliminate it? Now, there s one answer to that question is okay, fine; right, you don t eliminate that, but the tactical stuff is really old and so maybe we could focus [41:58] MR. SANGER: And expensive too to keep safe. MR. PERKOVICH: Right, and we could focus on that. But these are all things that are going to take a long time, I think, to work out. MR. SANGER: Okay. Other questions out here? Straight back here? Q: Thank you. Anne Penketh from the British-American Security Information Council, BASIC. George, you re talking about how difficult it is with India and Pakistan to crack that particular nut on fissile material ban. Do you think there is a case for moving this out of the conference on disarmament where clearly it s blocked because of Pakistan but with other countries hiding behind Pakistan as well?

14 [42:38] MR. PERKOVICH: Well, no, but I haven t though enough about it to, you know, say it so authoritatively as I just did, but here is why: A, moving anything out of the CD would produce a backlash from countries that are very attached to the CD and the U.N. bodies. I mean, that matters more or less, but the value of Fissile Material Cutoff really is derives from India, Pakistan, China, Israel potentially. The other states producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons have already stopped. The U.S., Russia, France, the U.K. They already have a moratorium France has already dismantled their facilities. We re not worried about that. So, the countries and China says it s stopped but it hasn t formalized it. So the countries that are producing new material that we know of are India and Pakistan. We re worried about Iran but that s a different discussion. So, moving it doesn t change Pakistan s opposition, so you get nothing that you really want by moving it out, I would argue, so I don t see that it would be worth the headache. And, by the way, I mean, I don t I just don t see Pakistan changing its position for a long time. MR. SANGER: It s coming to you from the other side. [44:19] Q: Thank you. Naj Meshkati, University of Southern California. Thanks for an enlightening speech. (Audio break) document which we expect to come out in the near future is National Intelligence Estimate. We hear that there is an update of it. We learn it from your articles, Mr. Sanger. Could you please, George, give us a little update about interaction between the Nuclear Posture Review and National Intelligence estimate, particularly in light of changes with at least some of the new policies of U.S. vis-à-vis giving some protective umbrella to some Middle Eastern countries basically the interaction of NIE and NPR? Thank you. MR. PERKOVICH: That s a great question and it s one where I m not comfortable guessing whether the NPR will address what you were alluding to. In other words, the secretary of state, at one point, in the Gulf, talked about maybe extending a U.S. defense umbrella, she said she didn t say nuclear defense umbrella but everybody can read into that nuclear to the smaller Gulf states. That idea has been talked about a lot. I actually think it s a bad idea to talk about it, but that s another discussion. Whether the NPR would say something about this, I don t know. I would be disappointed if it did because I think they re smarter than that, but maybe they could. [46:02] In other words, there will be language in there about reassuring allies, but do you then specify, you know, the Middle East where we don t have those formal alliances, and you do that in a document that s about nuclear weapons as opposed to other forms of conventional extended deterrence and so on? It s something really important to look out for in the document, but I wouldn t try to guess whether they felt compelled to do it.

15 In terms of U.S. nuclear posture and strategic necessity, I mean, I don t think anybody who works on this says, yeah, A, we would need nuclear weapons today in our planning to do any kind of operation in Iran, or, B, that if we did, we should talk about it. But I don t think anybody thinks they do. So I think that s kind of that s not that doesn t drive you know, a potential Iranian nuclear capability doesn t drive U.S. nuclear doctrine or posture or anything else. So it would be a question of politically what and how you wanted to speak about it, and I hope they ll be restrained about it. MR. SANGER: There is one area where the posture review may allude to Iran, though I doubt it would name it, which is that if, in fact, you ve got it right and I m sure you do that deterring terrorism, counterproliferation, nonproliferation, becomes the number-one objective, then suddenly you re taking a declaratory policy that so far has been pretty well limited to North Korea and applying it to Iran as well. MR. PERKOVICH: And I think you would find that they would be and I hope, you know rather artful in how they would talk about it, not too blustery MR. SANGER: Right. MR. PERKOVICH: but subtly kind of putting it [47:50] MR. SANGER: Right. Also, we re not likely to actually see a document out of the National Intelligence Estimate if they re just doing an update. I think they ve made it pretty clear to many of us in this room that they don t plan to publish a summary of this the way the Bush administration MR. SANGER: They had such a good time last time. (Laughter.) MR. PERKOVICH: Yeah, it worked out so wonderfully the last time. I m sure, of my many extraordinarily skilled competitors in this room, one of them will come up with it, but I don t necessarily think that we ll actually we ll see a published version. MR. SANGER: Other questions in the back. [48:29] Q: Steven Kull, PIPA. If there is a real emphasis on proliferation, doesn t that point to putting real importance on the question of no first use and also the possibility of a Middle East nuclear free zone? Do you anticipate these issues being dealt with? MR. PERKOVICH: I know that and other people in the room know that the administration, in the posture review, that they did consider no first use because there were people recommending it. I would be shocked if they decided that that was a policy they wanted to make, for a variety of reasons. And I think the debate on this issue is a very serious, legitimate debate that s a hard one to resolve. You know, how do you demonstrate it, how do you manifest it, how is more than words? Anytime you have this discussion with people who lived through the Cold War, they say, right, the Soviets said they had a policy

16 of no first use, but then when we got into all the documents and archives it was first use all the way. So, you know, it s deceitful and so on and so forth. I think what they will do is creep up on it, and I think in helpful ways. I would hope I think there s some reason to believe, for example, that the statement that everybody will be looking out for is kind of the main declaratory statement of the purposes for which the U.S. has nuclear weapons. A lot of people advocated a version that said, well, the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others. The rumors are that that won t be in it, but something verging on that will be there. That s part of the equation, but there is another part of the equation, which is the assurances that the U.S. makes to countries that don t have nuclear weapons, and there is some discussion that it could say that the U.S. will not threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states in good standing under the NPT. So that takes away first use, even against, you know, conventional against a state that doesn t have nuclear weapons. So now you re in the domain of only states [50:51] MR. SANGER: That s a big exemption for Iran, North Korea or MR. PERKOVICH: Right, and then the question is the phrasing does it have the phrasing that says in good standing under the NPT, in which case you could argue at some point, well, Iran is not in good standing. MR. SANGER: In good standing, and North Korea left it. MR. PERKOVICH: And North Korea right, exactly. Or you could even delete that phrase. You just say, we won t threaten to attack a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT, leave it cleanly like that, and then when people like Jonathan and Mary Beth and David say, but does this include North Korea or Iran, you could say, we ll make that judgment at the time. Do we think they have nuclear weapons or not, because they re not in the NPT or they violate it, you would have a basis for it. But you take those two things together, the kind of constriction of the positive context of use, and you add the assurance to non-nuclear weapons states, you re in a pretty narrow space that looks a lot like no first use. I mean, it s not quite there but you re narrowing in on it. I think that s how they would approach that, is my guess. [52:00] MR. SANGER: Other questions? Yes. Q: (Off mike) Middle Eastern nuclear free zone. MR. PERKOVICH: Oh, I can t imagine they re going to go near that, which I think I mean, I don t think I would do it in the posture review, but I think for the NPT and in the run-up for the NPT, as I tried to suggest here, I think it s a mistake to be so defensive about it. I mean, I think it is a reality; it is an issue that this question always comes up in the NPT. And I think that the Middle East peace process is mentioned in the resolution of 1995 at the NPT Extension Conference, which was required to get affirmation of the treaty, and that we ought to have, in the nonproliferation fora, discussions of the

17 links between the peace process, regional security and nuclear weapon capabilities, and that could include an international conference of all of the states party to take all of these issues together and work on them. And why be afraid of that, if you could get all the states parties to participate. And if they don t participate or aren t willing to come, then you expose that they re not that serious about it, actually, and make that an issue. But, again, I don t imagine the U.S. government is going to do that. MR. SANGER: Any more? Caren? Q: Thanks. Caren Bohan from Reuters. I have a political question for you, George. You write that Obama has not been able to mobilize his Cabinet or congressional leaders to care as much about this agenda as he does. Do you think the high profile he s putting on this with the summit and the events is going to change that, or do you think, as you write in here, that he s going to be too burdened by other concerns? [53:58] MR. PERKOVICH: The emphasis I was trying to make there was not so much that he s burdened by other concerns, which he clearly is. It was more on that others haven t I don t quite see that changing. I mean, I would like to. Let s take what I was referring to specifically with the Hill. Senator Kyl, on the Republican side, pretty much addresses this topic every day. I mean, he lives it, he breathes it, he knows details. I would argue he gets a lot wrong, but he s a very smart guy and he pays a lot of attention. There is no Democratic counterpart that wakes up every day and says, I m going to do battle with Jon Kyl on this issue. I own this issue. I know all the details; it s my issue. Now, Sam Nunn used to do that in the old days which were the old days. I mean, nuclear weapons mattered. There were lots of people who did this. Today, I would argue, notwithstanding the good efforts of Senator Kerry and others on a sporadic basis, there is a lack of real attention Senator Levin, who is a great guy, you know, is chairman of the Armed Services; when was the last time you heard him get out and give a big speech or talk a lot about nuclear policy? [55:12] It s understandable. We ve got troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. We re spending like we spent like a trillion dollars in Iraq and so on. The nuclear issue isn t there. It s very hard to get these ratifications that we re talking about if the only person living and breathing it is adamantly opposed and you don t have anybody who s really for it and for the president s agenda waking up and doing battle every day. I would argue the same thing happens in the Cabinet. I mean, Secretary of State Clinton, she didn t campaign on this stuff. She was pretty shy about it and all of her political career has kept kind of a you know, just to the post-cold War kind of ambiance about it. Secretary Gates actually knows this issue very well, and I think, from what you can tell, his leanings are basically positive but very, very careful and clearly, I think, of a view that a world without nuclear weapons probably is more dangerous place, which is different from the president s agenda. And then I think in the rest of the staff it s not clear who really, really kind of gets the big picture that the president is trying to put forward. So I think it pretty much he and the vice president are the ones who really kind