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After an election campaign that paid little attention to the spread of nuclear arms, it is time for the Clinton Administration to address what many officials and foreign policy specialists consider the greatest threat to American security after the Cold War. President Clinton's immediate agenda gives him three opportunities to do just that. First, he has to fill key nonproliferation posts in his administration. Second, he has a summit meeting with Russian President Yeltsin scheduled for March. Third, as part of its quadrennial defense review, the Administration will be conducting a review of nuclear policy. With personnel, one key post is already vacant, that formerly held by Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Ashton Carter. Another will soon be vacant, with the departure of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Lynn Davis. Whom the President appoints to these and other critical posts will say a lot about his approach to nonproliferation in his second term. The March 20-21 Helsinki Summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin could do a lot to advance the goal of deeper reductions in Start III and in so-called tactical nuclear arms. If the two presidents act on the principle that the fewer the warheads, the easier they are to control, they could go a long way to easing proliferation concerns. The nuclear policy review provides an opportunity to remedy a critical deficiency. That review should be done at the White House, not the Pentagon, to assure adequate consideration of the implications of America's nuclear posture for preventing nuclear proliferation. The United States has long acted as if there were no connection between its own nuclear policy and global proliferation. So long as it treats US nuclear arms, not as indiscriminate terrorist devices, but as a valuable instrument of policy, it should expect potential proliferators to follow its lead. Where's the Problem: Russia or Rogues?To judge from what sporadic public debate there has been on nuclear issues, the main proliferation menace comes from "rogue states," like Iran and North Korea. The rogue state idea is doubly misleading. First, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel are not considered rogue states. Yet they may pose greater proliferation risks than the so-called "rogues" by stimulating their neighbors to acquire the Bomb and/or serving as sources for nuclear know-how and technology. Second, the rogue state idea also misleads in implying that the way to get states to abandon their nuclear ambitions is to demonize them as outlaws and compel them to disarm. But there is no global sheriff to enforce international law and it is difficult to round up a posse to mete out punishment. Instead of dissuading insecure states from nuclear-arming, coercion may give them more of a reason to do just that. If recent U.S. intelligence estimates are correct, North Korea has amassed less than a bomb's worth of nuclear material. That is down from a late 1993 estimate of one or two bombs' worth. Iran has no weapons-grade nuclear material and will not be able to produce a bomb on its own for at least six years - four years for Russia to complete the reactor at Bushehr begun by West Germany, plus at least two more years to generate a bomb's worth of plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel and fabricate it into a warhead. By comparison, Russia has 24,000 warheads and enough nuclear material, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, to make tens of thousands more. Between rife corruption and loose controls, especially at Russia's civilian nuclear installations, there is a serious risk that weapons-grade material could seep out and end up in, say, Iran. Yet some in Congress, outraged at Russia's reactor sale to Iran, have tried to cut off aid for dismantling Russian warheads and controlling the extracted nuclear material. Cooperative Threat ReductionThe top US nonproliferation priority is to prevent nuclear anarchy by securing and disposing of Russia's nuclear stockpiles. This requires the United States to negotiate deep cuts in warheads in Russia and reciprocal American cuts, to dismantle the warheads and dispose of the nuclear material extracted from them by blending it down or otherwise making it unusable for bombs, and to arrange safe and secure transportation and storage for the warheads and material that remain. These steps cannot be accomplished without a strategy of comprehensive cooperation with Russia. President Clinton is fond of reminding the American people that no Russian nuclear warheads are targeted on the United States today, and vice versa. Yet it would take both sides little time to retarget their missiles. The President needs to be told that, given the deterioration in Russian command and control, to guard against misuse of warheads by military renegades it would be prudent to take the remaining weapons off hair-trigger alert. Bruce Blair of the Brookings Institution, for example, has suggested a number of useful steps to lengthen the nuclear fuse, including removing the warheads from ICBMs, storing warheads at separate locations from bombers, and removing the guidance sets from missiles on submarines. Has the United States government been up to the challenge? The record is far from reassuring. Securing Nuclear Material. Lab-to-lab cooperation has improved, but a greatly intensified effort is needed to secure and protect nuclear material, both in and out of Russia's weapons complex. Problems in the Russian naval reactor program are urgent. So is the security of warheads in transit. Uranium Purchases. After agreeing to purchase up to 500 tons of Russia's highly-enriched uranium used in warheads, the United States has proven to be a reluctant buyer. The Administration should expand its purchases and extend them to plutonium as well. Instead, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, responsible for executing the agreement, has been more concerned about commercial interests in preserving the world uranium market than about American security interests in acquiring bomb-making material. Japan and others have also been more eager to maintain their option for producing plutonium to fuel reactors than to buy up Russian uranium on the cheap. One interim alternative is to induce Russia to render its entire uranium stocks unusable for bombs by rapidly blending it down to below 20 percent U-235. Nuclear Accounting. In 1992 the C.I.A. said that there was an "uncertainty" of plus or minus 5,000 non-deployed warheads in the Russian arsenal. There is even greater uncertainty about the amount of weapons-grade material in Russian stockpiles. The Department of Energy does not even know the exact amount of material in the U. S. stockpiles. The way to narrow the bounds of that uncertainty is to cooperate with Russia in a joint and reciprocal effort in nuclear accountancy, including inspections of dismantling. Undertaking that effort should be a priority issue at President Clinton's March summit meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Start III and Further Cuts. Start II puts a ceiling of 3,500 on strategic nuclear warheads. While the U.S. Senate finally ratified the treaty last year, the Duma, Russia's parliament, has yet to do so. It has proven difficult in advance of ratification to get Russia to dismantle the warheads slated for reduction under the treaty. One political impediment to Duma ratification is the inequity of Start II limits. To satisfy Start II Russia will have to build single-warhead land-based missiles, something it lacks the money to do. Yet the United States has refused to consider further cuts in Start III until Start II is ratified. One way around the problem is for the United States to announce a goal in Start III of limiting the strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500. That would ease Russian perceptions of inequality. It would also reduce the numbers of warheads that need to be controlled. At least as important as the strategic nuclear arms are the substantial stocks of tactical nuclear arms still in the Russian arsenal. A nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon, whether it is called strategic or tactical. Nuclear artillery shells and gravity bombs pose an even greater "loose nuke" risk because they are easier for nuclear wannabes to steal and use than are warheads configured for delivery by ballistic missiles. They should be withdrawn from service and dismantled. That will require the United States to take reciprocal measures with its own tactical nuclear arsenal. Russia will also need help and encouragement to dismantle warheads scheduled for reductions under Start II, as well as the tactical warheads it has pulled back. New Barriers to CooperationIn the apt phrase of the Nunn-Lugar Act, nuclear safety lies in "cooperative threat reduction." Yet cooperative threat reduction is impeded by inadequate funding and high-level attention in the United States. It is also jeopardized by rising resentment in Russia, exacerbated by two distinctly uncooperative steps that the United States is contemplating: testing and deploying ABMs and expanding NATO eastward. ABMs. The United States is testing and deploying theater ballistic missile defenses that offer some protection against attacks by short- and medium-range missiles on airfields, troop and tank concentrations and other installations abroad. Many in Congress want to protect U.S. cities against missile attack by "rogue states" as well. But there are no such states with missiles that can reach the United States and none will have that capacity for at least fifteen years, according to U.S. intelligence. Were they to develop nuclear arms, they would have other means of delivery more readily at hand than ICBMs, such as ships or airplanes. The more imminent danger comes from the spread of nuclear arms. Reducing that risk begins with Russia. Yet Russia will not reduce its warhead stockpiles or take the other steps necessary to cooperate in reducing the risk of proliferation if the United States goes ahead with ABMs. It will instead hedge against ABM deployments by retaining more warheads. NATO Expansion. Expanding NATO east of the Oder-Neisse would break a promise the United States made to Russia at the time of German unification. This is arousing Russian suspicion and hostility, making it far more difficult for Russian leaders who do want to cooperate with the United States. With the US and NATO now committed to beginning NATO expansion at a July Summit, making a deal on nuclear and other security issues with Russia should become an urgent Clinton priority. Cooperative Threat Reduction Beyond RussiaCooperative threat reduction has worked elsewhere to curb proliferation. It has succeeded in Latin America, where Brazil and Argentina have abandoned their nuclear ambitions. It has convinced Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to become nuclear-free, giving up all the warheads they inherited after the breakup of the USSR. The most recent success story in cooperative threat reduction is North Korea. Had it not been for the October 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea could have turned the spent fuel now being canned into five or six bombs and its reactor, now shut down, could be generating more spent fuel for reprocessing. The deal came at almost no cost to the United States-and far cheaper than a war. Yet critics of deal-making remain unreconciled. While North Korea has complied fully and verifiably with the 1994 accord, Congress is reluctant to appropriate funds for carrying out America's part of the bargain. After a North Korean submarine ran aground in South Korean while on a spy mission, South Korea accused the North of staging a "commando raid" and, with American acquiescence, delayed the start of site surveys for the first replacement reactor for at least five months. That delay only postponed the date when the North will ship five or six bombs' worth spent fuel out of the country and permit a fuller accounting of its nuclear past. The South also prevailed on the United States to delay the resumption of talks with North Korea on curbing North Korea's missile exports. Stopping those exports in return for food and other credits would be a lot less expensive than building ballistic missiles defenses. North Korea's December apology has now opened the way for a resumption of the talks. Iran is another source of nuclear concern. Yet the Clinton Administration prefers to isolate Iran politically and economically rather than explore a deal that might keep Iran from seeking nuclear arms. The most imminent proliferation danger is in South Asia, where India and Pakistan, which have already gone to war twice, both have the capacity to assemble warheads in a matter of days. Ultimately, to stop the spread of nuclear arms globally will take more than cooperative engagement. It will take a comprehensive strategy to stigmatize nuclear arms at home and abroad. The Canberra Commission. Such a strategy has recently been outlined by the Canberra Commission, convened by the government of Australia and composed of internationally recognized authorities on nuclear arms, including General Lee Butler, former commander of STRATCOM, which oversees all Air Force and Navy nuclear forces; former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara; Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France; Lord Carver, chief of the British Defense Staff; and Rolf Ekeus, who heads the UN effort to disarm Iraq. The Commission's August 1996 report challenges many of the basic assumptions of those who believe in nuclear deterrence. It argues that despite the massive expenditures on nuclear arms during the Cold War, strategists proved unable to devise a war plan for the use of nuclear arms against a nuclear-armed rival that did not leave the initiator worse off, or one that convinced political leaders that nuclear use was worthwhile against non-nuclear states even when the nuclear powers were suffering major military setbacks. It argues that nuclear deterrence did not deter: it failed to prevent wars. Above all, it questions the assumption that nuclear arms can be retained in perpetuity and never be developed by others or used, either by accident or deliberate decision. The Commission calls upon the five nuclear states to commit themselves to the goal of eliminating nuclear arms and to start work immediately on phased, practical steps toward that end. Among the specific steps it recommends are an end to deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, taking all nuclear arms off alert, reciprocal commitments among the nuclear powers to no first use, and negotiation of a phased series of reduction agreements, starting with the U.S. and Russia and later involving other nuclear-armed states. Phased disarming would allow a gradual improvement of verification techniques and adjustment of other policies and eventually leave all nuclear powers with small residual arsenals, setting the stage for the ultimate abolition of nuclear arms. No First Use. No step would more favorably alter the strategic and political environment than for the U.S. to adopt the policy that the United States will under no circumstances use nuclear arms except in response to a nuclear attack. The armed services should plan, deploy and otherwise treat nuclear arms accordingly. That could be the principal conclusion of this year's review of nuclear policy. Given its conventional capabilities, the United States has no need to use nuclear arms to counter chemical, biological or conventional threats. IAEA Safeguards. The International Atomic Energy Agency has devised better techniques for safeguarding nuclear facilities and detecting undeclared activities, but American allies like Japan and Germany have delayed their adoption because of the increased cost and intrusiveness. Similarly, they have resisted efforts to negotiate tougher international standards for the protection and control of fissile materials, standards equivalent to those for nuclear warheads. The Administration ought to push its allies to accept tougher safeguards. Comprehensive Test Ban. The United States should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encourage others to do so. It should also try to commit the other four nuclear-weapon and threshold states to refrain from any nuclear tests, pending the treaty's entry into force. Banning nuclear tests will not, by itself, prevent proliferation. States can develop atomic bombs without testing them. But a test ban stigmatizes nuclear-arming. It can also keep states from developing more sophisticated nuclear devices to be delivered by ballistic missiles. The treaty has an immediate bearing on South Asia, where India is considering tests to develop just such a sophisticated nuclear device. India tried to block the treaty, but the U.N. General Assembly voted 158-3 last September to approve the pact and invite countries to sign it, isolating India. The test ban vote was another sign of rising support for marginalizing nuclear arms. Isolating India will not by itself persuade it to sign the treaty or stop it from future testing. Its security needs will also have to be met. The key is a firm commitment from arch-rival Pakistan not to deploy M-11 missiles it bought from China.
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