Strategy Session on NPT

March 16, 2010

Remarks by Ambassador Robert Grey

Washington is a good theatre town, but the most riveting production there now is on Capital Hill. History is being made; the main actors are in place; the scene is set. And for the moment, most of the rest of us are merely spectators. All of the elements of great drama are in place—old ideas, obsolete and flawed institutions, strong characters and strong emotions. But the script is still being written, and one awaits the outcome with a mixture of hope, and the knowledge that hope may be in vain. The final outcome is far from clear.

On the hopeful side, we are blessed with an American President who strongly supports arms control and international cooperation as the best ways of creating a new, stable and more peaceful international order. We all hope that 2010 will be a decisive year in the long struggle to rid the planet of nuclear weapons.

The President’s Prague Speech, the passage of Security Council Resolution 1887, and the scheduled summit on nuclear issues are all important steps. Progress in the US and Russian negotiations on a new START agreement are well on the way to completion.

Those of us who share his views are rightly heartened. This is a different face of America than the one we saw during the Bush Era. We now have an American administration, which has gotten us back on the track of cooperative multilateral engagement. We are all better off for it.

But much remains to be done. The real proof of progress will be reaching the goals, which the President has set out. The challenges are huge.

On the issues relating to nuclear issues, Politfact’s Obama-Meter produced a scorecard on progress to date. I’ll run through these briefly.

• Phasing out highly enriched uranium from the civic section. Some progress has been made.
• Strengthening the Proliferation Security Initiative. Again, some progress has been made, more is likely.
• Appointing a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security. This has been done.
• Enacting measures to prevent nuclear fuel from becoming nuclear weapons. Some steps have been taken. More will follow.
• To secure nuclear weapons grade materials in four years, progress is being made—so far so good.

Four goals identified by Politifact are under negotiation as we speak:

• Working with the Russians to move nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert.
• Seeking verifiable reductions in nuclear stockpiles.
• Extending the monitoring and verification provisions of the START treaty.
• Standing down the nuclear forces to be reduced under the Moscow Treaty.

We await the outcome of ongoing negotiations on these items, but it is clear that progress is being made.

The other goals: securing Senate ratification of the CTBT, organizing a successful NPT review conference, negotiating a verifiable FMCT treaty, strengthening the IAEA, and doubling its budget in four years, strengthening the NPT, and stopping the development of new nuclear weapons are characterized by the Politifact’s Obama-Meter as works in progress.

The outcome on these issues is far from clear. Presidents and U.S. administrations can propose lots of initiatives, but in both the domestic and international arenas there are practices and institutional procedures, which are difficult to overcome.

Let me digress first about the domestic constraints. He is facing a worldwide recession, the most dramatic downturn since the Great Depression. We are fighting two wars. The budgetary drain caused by the downturn and the wars have racked up enormous deficits and more government spending may be needed to create new jobs.

And, like most world leaders, the president is acutely aware that the international community must act collectively now if we are to contain climate change from irreversibly altering the global environment. We have to change the way we live and do it quickly. It won’t be easy. It will be enormously life altering, and it must be done.

Finally, the president is trying to establish a health care system that covers most Americans. This has been debated and fought over since 1915.

In short, while the issues we care about are high on the agenda of the President, many others are on his agenda as well. To add to his burdens he’s faced with an obdurate opposition party, whose taste for unilateralism, distain for strengthened regulation of our financial institution, and penchant for cutting taxes while fighting two wars, got us into this mess in the first place.

Their answer to the president’s repeated attempts to work collectively on all these issues has to date been resoundingly negative. The most extreme among them have stigmatized Teddy Roosevelt as a “Progressive,” and hence, not a true conservative. Apparently they want to go back to the days of McKinley.

It’s worth noting that we have a political system, which is in some respects obsolete. Here are some examples:

• The once vibrant state of California is in dire straits through a combination of public referendums and constitutional amendments. It now requires 66% of the Legislature to agree on new budgets or taxes. While the private sector is still a vibrant engine for change, the state’s infrastructure and its educational system are starved for resources. If the political system is not fixed, the private sector will fall behind as well.
• Only 55 to 60 of the seats in the House of Representatives are likely to change in any given election. The others are safe in the hands of one or the other party because of the way electoral districts are carved up. The American people are resoundingly middle of the road, the House of Representatives – the people’s house, is not. That having been said, the House majority has strongly supported the President. They passed a stimulus package, assisted the automobile industry, which consists of thousands of working class Americans, passed carbon cap legislation and health care reform. For the first time in history, we have had health reform legislation passed in both houses of the Congress. It remains to be seen if the reform will get to the President’s desk, but a lot more than health care reform is at stake here.
• In the Senate, 60 Senators must agree before a piece of legislation can be voted on. At the time the Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had ten times more people than Delaware, the least populous one. Today, the biggest, California has 69 times more people than the smallest, Wyoming. 41 Senators representing 12% of the nation’s population can keep a bill from being voted on. It’s also worth noting that this curious procedure has most frequently been used to stall legislation to protect civil rights.

Too many procedures, which after one deliberation prevent the majority from governing effectively, simply is unacceptable. It’s one thing to have deliberation. It’s quite another to shoot the whole system down.

What difference does this make in the nuclear area? Lots! 41 Senators sent a letter to the president, stating that significant reductions in nuclear weapons would not be in the national security interests of the United States in the absence of a significant program to modernize our nuclear complex. Some in this group appear to want a commitment from the president to build a new generation of nuclear weapons if they are to support a new START agreement and CTBT ratifications. This is in spite of the fact that a prestigious U.S. advisory panel, the JASONS, found no evidence that aging posed any threat to the credibly of the present U.S. nuclear arsenal. These so called “conservatives,” in a time of fiscal constraint, want us to spend 150 billion dollars for new nuclear weapons and apparently expect the international community to agree that this is a positive step towards nuclear disarmament!

It’s clear that ratification of the new START treaty and the CTBT will depend on the votes of a few Republican Senators who can see for themselves that these treaties are in our national interest. We need 67 votes. At the moment we have at most 62. The ratification of these two treaties hinges on the outcome of the Nuclear Posture Review, which will be completed soon. To be credible, the NPR must fully support the key elements of the President’s Prague speech. A posture review, which merely endorses prior commitments made in the Clinton Administration, would simply not be credible for those senators who support the President and too high a price to pay for the votes of those who don’t. It is not enough to pay lip service to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. Without forward movement on nuclear disarmament, we can’t expect non-nuclear states to agree to additional safeguards to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Other stated presidential goals must overcome international institutional regimes and procedures, which may no longer be adequate to today’s realities. They are: strengthening the IAEA and doubling its budget, stopping the development of new nuclear weapons, negotiating an FMCT and successfully organizing an NPT review conference.

Let’s start with the FMCT. The practices and procedures of the CD make it difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate a successful FMCT.

After a lapse of 10 years, it’s important to make a good faith effort to reinvigorate the CD. But, if it gets bogged down as it has recently, it’s time to establish another forum for FMCT negotiations in a group composed of nations, which are serious about making progress and agree to start out negotiating with agreed procedures, which make progress possible.

The NPT review conference members need to think seriously about what constitutes success. My own view is that if the U.S.-Russian new START negotiation is successfully concluded, if progress is being made on CTBT ratification, if the outcome of the nuclear posture review reinforces the objectives of President Obama’s Prague speech, then the groundwork would be laid for strengthening the non-proliferation regime even if other issues prevent the conference from reaching agreement on a final document. Whether these things begin within the next few weeks remains to be seen.

Efforts to strengthen the IAEA and double its budget face difficult procedural issues, such as raising individual contributions in the middle of a deep recession. But it can be done.

As for stopping the development of new nuclear weapons, a number of things must happen. First, the perception of an arms race in outer space and all that implies has to be addressed. If one side persists developing defensive systems against nuclear weapons, it’s not unreasonable for others to build new weapons to overcome them. Second, new doctrines need to be articulated, which make it clear that there is no longer a need to maintain large numbers of nuclear weapons, that they exist only to deter and that it’s time to devalue them.

We need to be clear about something else as well. We will never get rid of nuclear weapons unless we reduce, and reduce deeply, the amount of money being spent on conventional weapons. The balance of power is an essential element in achieving a stable international environment. There will be no stability if one nation or a group of nations spends more on its military than all the rest of the world combined. Such expenditures are unsustainable and will lead to more rather than less security in a world of climatic and nuclear threats and economic uncertainty. We have to reorient our economies and ways of doing business to address these issues collectively. We have all learned that it’s impossible to build walls to keep people out, or for that matter, to keep people in. Collective action is the only way forward. Peace, as one famous foreign minister said, is indivisible.

All this will take time, and the prospects are unclear, which underscores the possibility that it’s time to start serious discussions of a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the SG.

Reforming domestic and international political and legal institutions is a daunting task, perhaps an impossible one. Coming up with new procedures to push towards a nuclear-free world while working to improve existing institutions may well be the only way forward. Most agree that global warming is an immediate problem, which must be addressed now if progress is to be made in 50 years. Nuclear weapons elimination is an issue, which must be addressed and acted upon now. We can’t afford to wait another 50 years.