Nukes

Via Robert Farley, an article noting that "The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades." One of the worst-covered aspects of the Bush foreign policy has been this element of proliferation policy -- namely, that one major source of our difficulty in getting the multilateral non-proliferation process to prevent Iran and North Korea from going nuclear is that we keep breaking the rules. The NPT requires the legitimate nuclear powers to be taking steps to disarm, toward an eventually goal of global nuclear abolition.

We're going in the other direction, hoping, in essence, for Iran to be subject to restrictions tighter than what the NPT requires of Iran, while the United States (and Israel, and now India as well) can violate its terms or refuse to join its framework without consequence. Brute force is the only way you could possibly enforce that sort of ruleset. If the actual goal were non-proliferation -- as opposed to asymetrical proliferation -- it would be easy to find alternatives to war.

Comments

I'm not familiar with the detailed requirements that the non-proliferation treaty imposes on the US.

But another important point made by the NYT article is that if a new, untested warhead design is selected, we will have to *test* it to know if it's any good, and that this will require that we break another treaty: the comprehensive test-ban treaty.

You'd almost think that an administration that chose such a path was *trying* to undermine our arms control and non-proliferation treaties...

Posted by Alex R | January 8, 2007 9:47 AM

The whole point of the NPT is to maintain the dominance of the US and the European powers with nukes. You seem to think there's some proceduralist solution to the basic fact of power inequalities in world politics. That attitude is called liberal utopianism and does not have a distinguished record. Iran and North Korea would be breaking the rules even if we did not, because the rest of our policies are so inimicable to theirs.

Posted by otto | January 8, 2007 9:48 AM

I'm really hoping your book is not going to say that the new foreign policy that the US needs is stronger international organisations whose rules the US actually follows. No such policy will ever be attempted; if it is attempted, it will not be successful.

Posted by otto | January 8, 2007 9:49 AM

Actually, what's new and different about the nuclear warhead that is being discussed here is that it will NOT be tested, either in an open-air, undersea or underground test. Rather, the designs will be verified by supercomputer simulation, which will allow the US to avoid violating the letter of the nuclear test ban treaty.

Posted by blake | January 8, 2007 9:56 AM

"Depend, but don't verify."

I love this admin. It makes my depressive tendencies seem like fatuous optimism.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 8, 2007 10:25 AM

I'm really hoping your book is not going to say that the new foreign policy that the US needs is stronger international organisations whose rules the US actually follows. No such policy will ever be attempted; if it is attempted, it will not be successful.

What's the alternative otto? Asymmetries in power will be with us for the foreseeable future (at least until the grand utopia of one world government). The ONLY way to deal with conflicts peacefully is by proceduralist means that set out rules both the strong and the not-so-strong must follow. Almost by definition, the strong will have greater influence in righting said rules and will thereby benefit more from them. "So what's in it for the North Koreas of the world" you ask? The idea is that the rules - however skewed they might be - would still be better than weak nations would get in a "total state of nature" international environment. In time, the rules could then be changed further so as to ease said imbalances.

A major advantage of international institutions is that they ratchet down tensions making powerful nations much more amenable to concessions. Think of the power medium class "law abiding nations" like Brazil wield by way of international institutions. While it doesn't compare to the power of the U.S. it is still far more than we would ever deign to give them in a non-procedurialist system like 19th century Europe. The alternative is to set up feudalism on a global scale with intertwining allegiances and opposing factions where the assassination of a minor national figure leads to world war.

Posted by WillieStyle | January 8, 2007 10:36 AM

Almost by definition, the strong will have greater influence in righting said rules

A Freudian slip if ever there was one.

Posted by WillieStyle | January 8, 2007 10:45 AM

I'm absolutely baffled why people think Iran having nukes is worse than Pakistan having them. It's true, the current Pakistani regime (and it is a regime) is more friendly to the US than the Iranian one. But the people of Pakistan may be more virulently anti-American than any other country on Earth. Musharraf's hold on power has never been particularly stable, at least in terms of his hold on the country. And, oh yeah, they are always at risk of a nuclear war with India. Shouldn't people be worried about the nukes Pakistan actually has?

Posted by Freddie | January 8, 2007 11:29 AM

“We will not ‘un-invent’ nuclear weapons, and we will not walk away from the world,” General Cartwright said in a recent interview. “Right now, it is not the nation’s position that zero is the answer to the size of our inventory.”

If not zero, maybe something less than the 5,700 active warheads that we currently have. Just how insecure about their penis size are these guys?

Posted by daveNYC | January 8, 2007 11:49 AM

"Shouldn't people be worried about the nukes Pakistan actually has?"

People are worried. Problem is: Pakistan already _has_ those nukes, won't give them up, and any attempt to forcibly disarm them would result in significant loss of life.

Posted by MattNotYglesias | January 8, 2007 11:52 AM

If the 'rules' to be accepted include leaving 100,000s of Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and forcing arab countries to give oil rents to US firms, there is no sustainable international organization which will maintain them. First, you need to establish the common interest, then the rules can go on top. If the rules are the "Baghdad Pact" i.e. Western imperialism and Zionism under the guise of cooperation, it will suffer the same fate as the Baghdad Pact, i.e. including destabilising the regimes that participated in it.

The starting point must rather be: what accommodations are we willing to make to Middle East governments and peoples which we are currently not making? And on the basis of those accommodations, what sort of international cooperation is possible? The proceduralist aspect is the least important.

Posted by otto | January 8, 2007 1:25 PM

Ad hoc arrangements here and there? That's simply not tenable. There has to be a reason for powerful nations to feel they cannot simply reneg on promises they no longer wish to keep. Also, weaker nations need means other than violence to coerce powerful nations to make accomodations. Without proceduralism you either have feudal arrangements with 'client' states or you have chaos where the only way a weak nation can get the attention of the U.S. is to blow up some civilians.

Yes, details matter. Yes, Isreali settlements are counter productive. But without proceduralism and strong institutions, your details will never be enforced. Weak nations will bargain with assymetric violence and the strong will either pay their leaders off (see Arafat) or crush them, depending on how the political winds blow.

Choose one:
Instituionalism, Feudalism or Chaos.

Posted by WillieStyle | January 8, 2007 2:07 PM

Alex R: The U.S. signed, but did not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctbt#US_Ratification_of_the_CTBT

Posted by noumenalself | January 8, 2007 3:18 PM

Matt, you've written in disbelief about the NPT before. When will you realize that it is a worthless agreement precisely because the US (and the other nuclear countries) never had any intention of disarming, and the rest of the world knows this.

Posted by Mitch Schindler | January 8, 2007 5:24 PM

The Iraqis have a phrase which they applied to Saddam's trial : "American Puppet Theatre".
Pakistan just bought F-16s. India bought nuclear technology. Two traditional enemies sold arms or arms related tech by the U.S.
Iran, on the other hand, mostly abided by the non-proliferation treaty. ( Reactors do generate power and enrichment is more efficient use of feedstock. )
Bad move, being so transparent and aboveboard. Now they benefit from U.S. bad press and cockamamie storytelling about how scary they are. In reality they aren't good little customers for the death merchants.
More American theatre results.

Posted by opit | January 8, 2007 11:25 PM

Right. Develop some new bomb technology that the Chinese can steal from Los Alamos and provide to Pakistan, et.al.

Posted by bob h | January 9, 2007 8:36 AM

We are disarming. We have less nuclear warheads now than we did ten years ago, and ten years from now we'll have even fewer.

But we also need to have modern weapons, or else we effectively unilaterally disarm through neglect. All we're doing is replacing old weapons, which is consistent with all of our treaty obligations.

Posted by Adam Herman | January 9, 2007 10:27 AM