A Non-Nuclear President? Marina Silva under scrutiny - Togzhan Kassenova

 Where Would Marina Silva Take Brazil’s Nuclear Policy?

Togzhan Kassenova

ASSOCIATE - NUCLEAR POLICY PROGRAM

Carnegie Endowment for Peace,  OCTOBER 2, 2014

SUMMARY

Brazil has one of the most advanced nuclear programs in Latin America, but presidential hopeful Marina Silva’s stance on nuclear energy and diplomacy is far from clear.

Brazilian politics are famous for their unpredictability, and Marina Silva’s sudden emergence as a presidential front-runner is the latest example. But how she would lead as president should she win the October 5 election is not clear. “Marina is a big question mark,” observed a Brazilian foreign policy analyst. Predicting her choices on specific policy questions is difficult at best. 

This is particularly true, and particularly important, when it comes to nuclear issues, both domestic and international. Brazil has one of the most advanced nuclear programs in Latin America, but the presidential hopeful has said remarkably little on the subject. And what can be gleaned is far from a clear picture. 

A REMARKABLE RISE

Even those Brazilians who do not plan to vote for Marina in the presidential election on October 5 admit that she has an incredible story. Born in the Amazon rainforest, illiterate until the age of sixteen, and having experienced poverty with her parents struggling to feed her and her siblings, Marina went on to become an internationally known environmentalist, a high-ranking official in the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and a candidate with an impressive 20 million votes in Brazil’s 2010 presidential elections. 

She entered the 2014 election campaign as the number-two on the ticket of Eduardo Campos of the Brazilian Socialist Party. Until late summer, the Campos-Silva team held third place in the polls behind the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, and Aécio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party. 

But then Eduardo Campos died tragically in a plane crash in August while on the campaign trail. The Brazilian Socialist Party nominated Marina as its new presidential candidate. Since then, the polls have consistently shown Marina Silva and Dilma Rousseff neck and neck in the upcoming vote. 

Amid the excitement surrounding her remarkable rise, the potential president’s positions on nuclear issues have been largely missing. Marina’s proposed government program does not contain a single reference to nuclear energy, nuclear disarmament, or nuclear nonproliferation. What Brazil’s nuclear policy will be under the next president is not a trivial matter. Brazil is one of only three countries in Latin America to produce nuclear energy, one of a few countries in the world able to produce nuclear fuel, and the only non-nuclear-weapon state to be developing a nuclear-powered submarine.

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Brazil is currently highly reliant on hydro-resources to serve its energy needs, though the role of nuclear power in the country has increased over time. As of 2014,roughly 3 percent of Brazil’s electricity comes from nuclear plants—Angra 1 and Angra 2. After a twenty-year interruption, Brazil restarted work on its third nuclear power plant, Angra 3, which is expected to become operational in 2018. 

Proponents of expanding the country’s use of nuclear energy argue that Brazil’s reliance on hydro-resources makes the country vulnerable to an energy crisis. Disruption in electricity generation during droughts jeopardizes the country’s projected development growth. 

Until the 2011 disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the Brazilian government seemed to agree that the use of nuclear energy needed to be significantly increased, and it planned to construct up to eight new reactors. After the Fukushima accident, all references to new reactors beyond Angra 3 disappeared from government planning documents. 

The nuclear industry has been trying to influence the presidential hopefuls’ positions on the issue of nuclear energy expansion. The Brazilian Association for Development of Nuclear Activities, a nonprofit organization of companies in the nuclear power sector, developed a program, “Defining Brazil’s Nuclear Program: A Need for the Country’s Development,” specifically geared toward the candidates. The document argues that the government needs to build at least four additional nuclear power plants by 2030, or eight by 2040. And that in order to start adding capacity in time to meet future demand whoever wins the 2014 election needs to make decisions on new nuclear power plants in early 2015.

Marina Silva has long been critical of nuclear energy. Serving as Brazil’s minister of the environment in Lula’s cabinet between 2002 and 2007, she resigned from the post in protest over a number of issues, including the government’s decision to resume construction of Angra 3. In 2012, together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and over 50 organizations and individuals, she signed a letter urging world leaders to move away from “expensive and dangerous nuclear power.”

As a presidential candidate, Marina has reaffirmed her views. Her official campaign website reminds voters that she was the only one on the National Energy Policy Council to vote against restarting Angra 3 construction. In Marina’s words, “one of the largest problems with nuclear energy is that nobody knows what to do with the waste.”

Yet, confusingly, the initial draft of the government program that Marina Silva’s campaign released in late August said the share of nuclear energy in Brazil’s energy mix should be increased. Only hours later, however, Marina’s staff issued a statement blaming a technical error for the nuclear energy reference. Marina’s revised program calls for the “realignment of Brazil’s energy policy to focus on renewable and sustainable sources.” A mistake likely caused by accepting contributions from multiple authors exposed a campaign struggling to deal with the pressure of impending elections.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is considered to be reluctantly accepting of nuclear energy. Dilma’s government continues to finance Angra 3 construction, but she does not openly support the nuclear energy industry, and the government does not seek to expand the production of nuclear energy beyond the third power plant. 

All told, if Marina becomes Brazil’s new president, industry might have even less support from the top political leadership than it has now.

NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY

When it comes to international issues, it appears that Marina’s camp hasn’t given much thought to any questions related to nuclear diplomacy, such as Iran’s enrichment program or nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. This is not entirely out of the ordinary, as nuclear issues have taken a backseat to other agenda items during Dilma’s presidency as well.  

But this is a shift from the ambitious years of Lula’s government, when Brazil’s foreign policy shined brightly. Lula enjoyed the international spotlight and engaged in active presidential diplomacy. He also allowed Brazil’s able diplomatic corps, led by then minister of external relations Celso Amorim, to confidently and actively pursue various foreign policy agendas. 

One of the more daring and controversial attempts to influence the international debate took place in 2010 when Lula and Amorim, together with Turkey’s leaders, attempted to resolve the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. They negotiated a trilateral agreement—the Tehran Declaration—that was meant to pave the way for negotiations between the West and Iran. 

While that particular episode did not result in a breakthrough and was rejected by the West, it did prompt short-lived anticipation among international observers that Brasília could become an interesting, new player on the global nuclear scene. This, however, did not happen. 

It now appears that Brazil’s ambitious foray into the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program was a fluke made possible by multiple factors—including the unusual tandem of Lula and Amorim—that are unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future.

Under Dilma, Brazil’s foreign ministry has lost its luster and has been relegated to being just another ministry. While Lula reached out to then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and counted on Brazil’s soft power to resolve the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear program, Dilma distanced herself from the regime, citing its poor human rights record.

Marina, meanwhile, is expected to return Brazil’s foreign policy establishment to some of its former glory. Two weeks before the election, while visiting Washington, DC, Marina’s campaign coordinator Maurício Rands criticized the foreign ministry’s lack of prestige under the current government. 

But Marina will likely be similar to Dilma when it comes to nuclear issues and keep her distance from Iran and its nuclear program. She criticized then president Lulain 2010 for his active engagement with Ahmadinejad.

Marina might distinguish herself from both Lula and Dilma on one noteworthy nuclear issue. For years, the international nonproliferation community and Brasília have been at odds over the enhanced nuclear safeguards codified in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Additional Protocol. 

Brazil is already implementing nuclear safeguards that are designed to provide the international community with confidence that it only uses nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. However, as a country with an advanced nuclear program, Brazil is subject to outside pressure to allow IAEA inspectors even greater access to its nuclear facilities under the Additional Protocol. 

Brazil has insisted over the past decade that it will not sign the IAEA Additional Protocol. Brasília refuses to accept additional nonproliferation obligations while nuclear-weapon states do not demonstrate sufficient progress toward nuclear disarmament. Opponents of the Additional Protocol also argue that Brazil is doing enough to provide confidence that its nuclear activities are peaceful. Some critics in Brazil are concerned that granting greater access to Brazil’s nuclear facilities would make the country vulnerable to industrial espionage, a claim that international safeguards experts deem unfounded.

In contrast to Lula and Dilma, Marina Silva criticized Brazil’s reluctance to adhere to more stringent safeguards. In 2010 she publicly argued that the country should sign the IAEA Additional Protocol because not signing had put Brazil into a “rather delicate situation” and looked strange since Brazil only pursued nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Yet, whether Marina would follow her own advice and push for Brazil’s adherence to the IAEA Additional Protocol should she become president is an open question. 

For the most part, Brazil’s presidential campaign has been focused on domestic economic and social questions. That focus is natural, and the absence of nuclear policy from the discussion is not surprising. Yet, whoever wins the election should surely devote time and effort to thinking about these issues given the country’s prominent role in the global nuclear system.

China: Flexionando os musculos mais afirmadamente - Douglas H. Paal (Carnegie)

 Contradictions in China’s Foreign Policy

Douglas H. Paal

Carnegie Endowment, December 13, 2013

You may have missed the funeral, but China’s new leadership has quietly buried the admonition of former leader Deng Xiaoping that as China rises in wealth and power it should maintain a low profile (known as taoguang yanghui). In its place, the new leadership is advancing a more proactive diplomacy in surrounding regions. President Xi Jinping is displaying self-confidence that seems to match the mood of the times in China, one of renewed nationalism and self-assertion. In most neighboring capitals this development will be viewed positively but warily; in Manila and Tokyo, less positively.

The issue is that China wants the benefits of a charm offensive with its neighbors, but it also wants to jealously guard its far-flung territorial claims. It cannot do both.

Beijing held a major conference on peripheral diplomacy on October 24 and 25. Xi made what was described as an “important speech,” followed by remarks by Premier Li Keqiang and Beijing’s top party and government foreign policy officials. This was shortly before China announced its intention to create a State Security Commission (also variously translated as National Security Council or National Security Commission) at the third plenum of the 18th Party Congress. Taken together, these actions portend a concerted activism that will deploy China’s newly acquired wealth and influence to “maintain a stable peripheral environment.”

Xi’s speech catalogued the economic aid, trade, scientific and technological, financial, security, and public relations diplomacy tools for China’s regional strategy. The official press releases did not mention sensitive issues such as territorial disputes or the soon-to-be-imposed air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea. According to people familiar with the details of the meeting, however, these issues were very much on the agenda.

As if to foreshadow the peripheral diplomacy conference with examples of what China is undertaking, Xi conducted a four-nation state visit to Central Asia in September. During his stop in Kazakhstan, he called for a “new silk road” with enhanced infrastructure and financing for energy, trade, telecommunications, and regional development throughout the region. The trip was positively reviewed.

Also before the conference, Xi and Li participated in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Indonesia and the East Asia Summit in Brunei in October. While U.S. President Barack Obama stayed home to deal with a government shutdown, they conducted welcome visits to five Southeast Asian nations with promises of aid and trade.

One important announcement was the formation of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) infrastructure bank. According to one official, this concept envisions using China’s substantial foreign exchange holdings to finance ports, railways, highways, and other infrastructure to integrate China with Southeast Asian markets. Beijing intends to achieve regional buy-in with nominal contributions to the bank’s capital from some of the members of ASEAN. The long-term economic and soft-power implications of this scheme, if carried through, appear substantial.

Differentiated Treatment of Governments and Publics

One result of the conference on peripheral diplomacy was an affirmation of the benefits of trying to win public support among the populations with whose governments China is having difficulties. After months of relentlessly negative press about Japan in Chinese media, in late October China hosted the ninth Beijing-Tokyo Forum, composed of former officials and private sector representatives from both countries. The media coverage of this relatively small event was uncharacteristically positive, and Japanese participants were able to contribute signed articles to Beijing’s outlets.

Despite truly negative results for China in Japanese polls since the intensification of the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and the announcement of the East China Sea ADIZ on November 23, Beijing reportedly is prepared to continue seeking to improve the attitudes of ordinary Japanese while freezing high-level official exchanges. Japanese trade and investment with China has remained surprisingly resilient. Beijing’s goal is to isolate and press the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to acknowledge the existence of a dispute over the islands.

Similarly, China is treating the Philippines in a differentiated fashion. President Benigno Aquino III was shut out of a China-hosted regional gathering because of ongoing disputes over offshore shoals and submerged rocks. Beijing is particularly irked by Manila’s so-far-successful pursuit of a case against Chinese territorial claims with the UN’s International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Nonetheless, when Typhoon Haiyan (known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines) devastated the southern Philippines, Beijing slowly but substantially assisted with humanitarian relief. China even dispatched its new naval hospital ship, the Peace Ark, to help treat those injured.

No Less Assertive About China’s Claims

Another result of the burial of Deng’s low-key approach to foreign affairs at the peripheral diplomacy conference was reinforcement of China’s claims to disputed maritime territories. The conference reportedly gave final approval to the long-gestating objective of establishing the East China Sea ADIZ. It may have also envisioned ADIZs in the Yellow and South China Seas.

The notion first surfaced publicly in 2008 and gained support as Japan increasingly reported Chinese intrusions into its ADIZ, leading many Chinese to seek parity with Japan. Beijing did extensive research into the subject and discovered that the zones are not governed by international law and are well within China’s rights to establish. When Japanese officials publicly discussed shooting down Chinese drones over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the impulse in China to move toward the declaration of a Chinese zone was strengthened.

Officials saw the zone as a means to increase leverage on Japan. If China were to declare a zone encompassing the disputed islands and overlapping Japan’s ADIZ, it would presumably increase domestic and international pressure on Tokyo to negotiate rules of engagement to avoid incidents. This would give China the opportunity to insist as a precondition that Japan admit, as it has been unwilling to do, that a dispute exists over the sovereignty of the islands.

In light of the generally positive thrust of the policies intended with the peripheral diplomacy conference, the announcement of China’s new ADIZ seemed especially clumsy and counterproductive with regard to China’s neighbors. The People’s Liberation Army has responsibility for the ADIZ and thus for its declaration. The declaration initially sounded like all dire warnings and no reassurance. The intensely negative reaction from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Australia, and the nervous finger strumming of other neighbors, subsequently caused China to issue a series of reassuring clarifications.

This clumsiness, in contrast with the leadership’s generally positive intent to promote a stable regional environment for China’s continued development, may be due to the continuing effects of a military with scant diplomatic experience stepping into a diplomatic role. Former Chinese diplomats were quick to ask foreigners to tell the Chinese leadership that prior consultation on announcements such as that of the ADIZ should occur to avoid unnecessarily negative reactions. There is hope that China’s new State Security Commission will bridge some of the gaps in policy execution, despite experience that dictates otherwise.

But it is equally plausible that China’s leaders remain comfortable taking tough stances on issues involving sovereignty. Certainly, Xi’s track record for the past year has emphasized vigorous defense of Chinese claims to disputed territories and advocated an increasingly capable military, especially in new areas of maritime activity. During a recent visit there, it was much easier to find ordinary Chinese taking pride in the fact that their government established China’s growing influence through the declaration of the ADIZ than to locate critics.

Many Chinese are pleased that their government has taken a step to enhance and extend the reach of Chinese influence in a way that others cannot halt. This pride about the ADIZ announcement is consistent with the use of maritime administration vessels to assert Chinese presence in disputed waters, using ostensibly civilian means to circumvent direct military confrontation.

Policy Implications

China’s adoption of a well-resourced agenda seeking better relations with its neighbors offers the kind of competition for influence that the U.S. government has repeatedly said it welcomes. China pursued such an agenda between 1998 and 2008 with considerable success, especially in Southeast Asia.

After the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the global financial crisis, however, China became more outspoken and intolerant of its neighbors’ claims. It embarked on an approach that would seize on actions by others involving disputes, such as Vietnam creating a municipal jurisdiction for its disputed South China Sea islands, and respond even more forcefully with actions of its own. This has triggered a series of quid pro quo chain reactions across the region.

In any event, whether China’s neighbors are charmed or alarmed by Beijing’s actions, their demand for an American counterweight will continue to grow. It is incumbent on the United States and China’s neighbors to make the U.S. investment in their security rest within broader economic and diplomatic activities that will sustain the support of the American people. The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations symbolize this productive path to greater economic interdependence as part and parcel of a continuing U.S. role in the region.

Unlike in Southeast Asia, where distances and lower levels of military development tend to soften the effects of frictions with China for now, in Northeast Asia, all parties are better armed and in fairly close proximity, so their air forces and navies are well within range of each other. Moreover, the present leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea appear more willing to accept risks than their predecessors. Indeed, each capital seems to have calculated that a simmering level of tension suits its political needs. This can be the tinder for conflagrations that quickly get out of control despite intentions of restraint.

In this environment, one normally reaches for a cookbook of confidence-building mechanisms, such as hotlines, agreements on incidents at sea, and mid- and high-level diplomacy. This may be possible and probably is worth seeking between South Korea and China, where ADIZs overlap but territorial claims do not. In the South China Sea disputes, stepped-up efforts to achieve a workable code of conduct would be preferable to a new round of ADIZ announcements.

If China continues to condition such mechanisms with Japan on acknowledgement of a territorial dispute, then the political will to agree will not be found in Tokyo. The United States should continue to combine messages urging restraint by all parties with robust reaffirmation of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.

A delicate balance must be struck between being unyielding to more unilateral efforts to change the status quo and getting trapped in escalatory behavior that might otherwise be avoided. This will require spokespeople for the Obama administration to speak with greater clarity and uniformity than they have at present on how the United States intends not to recognize China’s new ADIZ. There is a need to reconcile State Department and White House statements with notices from the Federal Aviation Administration to civilian airlines that imply acceptance of the new ADIZ.

As it has done, the Obama administration should insist on freedom of navigation despite the declared ADIZ and on abiding by international established practices within the zones. It should also assert that an ADIZ conveys no implications regarding sovereignty.

And the United States and its security partners need to maintain or increase the pace of deployments and exercises within the first island chain to dilute the Chinese sense of having diminished American influence there. They should also compete vigorously with China’s charm diplomacy in traditional and creative ways. There is considerable room for a range of multilateral initiatives on issues such as public health, the environment, education, and the sharing of fisheries as well as on more conventional security and diplomatic arrangements. The U.S. Congress should support and not impede the president’s ability to carry out the nation’s diplomacy.

In addition, the United States should sustain, deepen, and broaden its newly revived military-to-military interaction with China’s armed forces. Congress should trust the U.S. military and retract the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act’s constraints on that activity.

Finally, U.S. national security authorities should calmly seek opportunities to show China that the ADIZ surprise announcement was a costly mistake. Much as when North Korea launched a satellite and conducted its third nuclear-weapon test and the United States later announced an increase in anti-ballistic missile interceptor launchers in Alaska, Washington should patiently and nonprovocatively undermine the sense that American forces are being pushed out of China’s near seas.

Beijing should be helped to understand that it is not a zero-sum game.

2058) Nuclear Weapons and National Security - Carnegie Endowment

Nuclear Weapons and National Security — A New Strategy
George Perkovich
Carnegie Endowment Q&A, April 07, 2010

The Obama administration released a new nuclear arms strategy on Tuesday. The Nuclear Posture Review narrows the use of nuclear weapons and says that the primary role of the U.S. nuclear posture is to deter an attack on the United States and prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

In a video Q&A, George Perkovich analyzes U.S. strategy, nuclear deterrence, and national security. Perkovich contends that the new policy reflects the reality we live in today and gives momentum to President Obama’s long-term goal of living in a world without nuclear weapons.

* What is the Nuclear Posture Review and how important is it?
* What are the key elements of the new report?
* How significantly did President Obama alter U.S. nuclear strategy?
* Does the new policy limit America’s nuclear deterrent?
* How does the NPR relate to Obama’s goal of moving toward a world without nuclear weapons?
* Why is the strategy controversial?
* Are disarmament advocates going to be disappointed by the NPR?
* How does the NPR set the stage for the new START agreement, Global Nuclear Security Summit, and Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference?
* Does the new strategy influence how the U.S. can contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

What is the Nuclear Posture Review and how important is it?

The Nuclear Posture Review is a document required by the U.S. Congress, where the Secretary of Defense sends to Congress the administration’s overall view of nuclear weapons—the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security policy, what they want to communicate to allies that we try to reassure with these weapons, and how they communicate to potential adversaries of the United States what the deterrent strategy of the United States is.

From that document then come instructions which the military uses to actually design the targeting options for nuclear weapons and the planning of the U.S. nuclear force posture. The posture review also in a sense sets out the requirements for nuclear weapons, which then has implications in the budgets of the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and has implications for the size of the infrastructure necessary to produce and maintain U.S. nuclear weapons.

So it’s your kind of your basic operating system for nuclear weapons.

What are the key elements of the new report?

The new posture review departs from the one that the Bush administration did early in its term in several ways. One, the Obama one says that the primary objective or concern of U.S. nuclear posture is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons by terrorists. This is interesting because past administrations have said these are very important things, but it’s not part of our nuclear policy and our nuclear posture.

The administration also says very clearly that the goal of the United States is ultimately to have a world without nuclear weapons and acknowledges we’re far from that possibility today, but that it is an objective and therefore that the United States will try to lead the world in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in everyone’s national security policy.

So, the United States would try to lead by example and, as much as possible, to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. security, but also to then encourage and put pressure on others to do the same.

So those are two kind of interesting changes in priority, in a sense, of this posture.

How significantly did President Obama alter U.S. nuclear strategy?

Actually, the Bush administration got an unfair criticism. People around the world didn’t like the administration for a lot of reasons, and they basically interpreted the Bush administration’s strategy as somehow increasing the reliance by the United States on nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold that would decide whether the United States would use nuclear weapons. Neither of those was true.

The Bush administration also sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and I would argue that the Obama posture review extends what was already a process begun by the Bush administration and it extends it in ways reflecting the realities of the world.

The United States has greater conventional, non-nuclear military capabilities. It’s fought a couple of wars since the last posture review in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are major wars, cost more than a trillion dollars, and it’s obvious to everyone that we would never use nuclear weapons in these situations. They’re irrelevant, basically, and we have lots of other needs that need to be concentrated upon and fulfilled.

And so, this posture review reflects what the military understands, which is that it’s almost impossible to imagine a circumstance—other than a nuclear attack by a major state against the United States—where the United States would threaten to use nuclear weapons and so we ought to have a policy that reflects that reality.

Does the new policy limit America’s nuclear deterrent?

If you ask, how would the United States interpret it if a competitor makes declarations about its nuclear posture. Let’s say Russia for example. If the Russians came out and said, “Americans trust us, we won’t use nuclear weapons against you.”

Do you think the U.S. government, Congress, and the military are just going to take that at face value and say well the Russians said they won’t use nuclear weapons against us therefore let’s forget about the thousands of nuclear weapons that they have. No. You want to look at what their capabilities are, you want to look at scenarios—you want to be real.

Similarly, what the United States actually says in terms of whether or not it’s beating its chest and saying to the world out there, don’t you dare doing anything to us or we will nuke you. That they would take that seriously and as gospel is strange credulity. But similarly if we said to our potential adversaries, don't worry we’re past nuclear weapons. We still have a couple thousand of them, but don’t worry we’re nice guys. They won’t believe that either.

What they are looking at is what capabilities you have, the scenarios they can imagine of conflict, and the basic reality that if the United States was threatened in a fundamental way, it’s existence was threatened, an extreme threat or one of its allies like Japan was threatened that way, the other guy knows that if we have nuclear weapons and that’s the only thing we can use to defeat the other guy, that’s what we’re going to do.

So it doesn't matter so much what we say about it, it’s that capability and that context that will determine whether a state is deterred or not.

How does the NPR relate to Obama’s goal of moving toward a world without nuclear weapons?

This posture review states in many places that the goal of the United States is to move toward a world without nuclear weapons. It’s not unilateral, the United States is not going to get rid of its nuclear weapons alone. And it states clearly that as long as others have weapons, the United States will have to retain them and we will have to retain them in a safe and reliable manner.

But it does commit to this goal. It says if others want to work with us, we’re prepared to go there. It very specifically, for example, invites Russia and China—the two main potential competitors of the United States in a nuclear sphere—to further strategic dialogue, to further develop common understanding, so we can avoid any offensive nuclear competition, but actually move to reduce the role of these weapons in each of our cases. And to make sure that we have stable relations so that we don’t get into a crisis that could lead to a nuclear war or the threat of a nuclear war.

So that’s very important in the posture, that invitation to Russia and China to reduce the role of nuclear weapons.

Why is the strategy controversial?

I don’t think this is going to be controversial. There may be people on the far right who don’t like it, but in many cases they don’t understand reality, whether it was under the Bush administration or any previous administration. If you don’t understand the reality that, since 1945, we haven’t used nuclear weapons, no one has used nuclear weapons in anger, that every president has understood that this is a taboo that they don’t want to cross and that we don't make nuclear threats idly. You have to understand that and many people don’t.

You also have to understand that U.S. military doesn’t want to use nuclear weapons, doesn't feel that it would need to use nuclear weapons, and that we have enough conventional military capabilities to deter any rational actor from threatening us. The statements in this posture review don't really change all of that. There is some reassurance to adversaries, but it’s not the United States unilaterally giving up military power.

On the left, it will be criticized because they will argue that the President doesn’t go far enough to say that the only purpose for nuclear weapons is to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others.

So the posture review says, look we want to move to that point of saying the only way in which we would consider using nuclear weapons is to retaliate to a nuclear attack. But states may develop biological weapon capabilities in the future and so we may then face a massive threat that is non-nuclear and so we would reserve this option. And more importantly today, we have some allies that we care greatly about, including South Korea, who worry that they face an adversary, in this case North Korea, that could threaten them with massive artillery attacks because the distance between Seoul and North Korea is very slight.

And our ally South Korea might want us to still threaten North Korea with a nuclear response even though North Korea would be attacking South Korea conventionally. The U.S. military knows that we can defeat North Korea without nuclear weapons, but in order to reassure our ally South Korea we’re not saying quite that way. We’re leaving the options fuzzier because this is reassuring to our ally South Korea.

Are disarmament advocates going to be disappointed by the NPR?

Some of the disarmament advocates around the world might be disappointed because people wanted President Obama to have a posture and declare that the only purpose is deter the use of nuclear weapons by others.

It’s very important to realize that this is the best posture review that the president and his administration thought could get the 67 votes in the U.S. Senate needed to ratify the START treaty.

On the one hand, you could have a posture review which says lovely things opposed to nuclear weapons that the disarmament community would applaud, but would in turn reduce the chances you could actually get a real treaty to reduce nuclear weapons ratified in the Senate.

So the administration decided to have a posture review that is conceived in terms of what we need to do to get votes in the Senate to actually implement reductions that can lead toward the future that disarmament advocates might want, even if our language now may disappoint them.

How does the NPR set the stage for the new START agreement, Global Nuclear Security Summit, and Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference?

The NPR is very important—it’s a document that will guide U.S. policy for the next five years. The new START treaty which will be signed in Prague on April 8 and hopefully ratified this year was already informed by the Nuclear Posture Review.

When the nuclear posture review was being drafted, the negotiators of the START treaty and the Pentagon and the military got together and said, here’s the basic parameters of what we’re going to talk about in START, in the Nuclear Posture Review that you are doing do you have any problem with us reducing to these levels. And the answer was no, we can maintain deterrence, the security of the United States is ensured at the levels that we are talking about with START. So in a way the posture review came before the START treaty even though it’s being announced only two days before the signing of the treaty.

Politically what all this means is that the President’s agenda that he announced a year ago in Prague of reducing the role of nuclear weapons now has the posture review which does that, the START treaty coming several days later which demonstrates it, the nuclear security summit in Washington on April 12-13 with the heads of more than 40 countries showing a commitment to try to keep nuclear material from terrorists (that’s the focus of the nuclear security summit).

All of which is meant to give momentum and show the seriousness of the United States as the review conference happens in May in New York with all the states in the nonproliferation treaty. So the United States is trying to say look, let’s keep the bargain where all of the rest of the world agrees not to get nuclear weapons and to work with us to keep nuclear weapons from terrorists and other states, because we are keeping our side of the bargain. We are doing everything we can to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and reduce the number of nuclear weapons.

We’re demonstrating that in April, you respond in kind in May.

Does the new strategy influence how the U.S. can contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

The NPR is not directed against Iran in any way. If you ask the U.S. military, we don’t need nuclear weapons to fight or deter Iran from committing the kind of aggression that militaries prevent. And even if Iran had a handful of nuclear weapons, the United States for the next decade at least is going to have thousands of strategic nuclear weapons as well as hundreds of shorter range nuclear weapons.

There is no nuclear equation with Iran and the U.S. military knows that even if people in the public or Congress say we may need to nuke Iran. That is not the way the military thinks about it.

What the posture review can help do though is encourage other countries to work with us to isolate Iran diplomatically, politically, and economically. With an understanding the United States is trying to be progressive or constructive in the way the rest of the world thinks about nuclear weapons.

And therefore we strengthen our persuasiveness in getting the rest of the world to be constructive with us as we deal with the kind of threats that Iran poses.