The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms

Brookings Institution Press

ISBN: 978-0-8157-2429-2

Can there be another major U.S.-Russia arms treaty? Can all the tactical and surplus warheads that have so far escaped controls be brought into such a framework? Can a modus vivendi be reached between the two states on missile defense? And what of multilateral accords on nuclear testing and production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons?

For some observers, nuclear arms control is a dusty relic of the Cold War; for others, a futuristic utopian dream about a denuclearized world. As Steven Pifer and Michael O’Hanlon make clearly evident in The Opportunity, however, the topic remains closely tied to some of the most urgent and important security challenges of the day and thus demands close attention and renewed focus.

Watch both authors discuss arms control, the priority this issue should take in U.S. national security, and the opportunity to advance American security and prevent the threat of proliferation.

Classic U.S.-Russia arms control, revived by the Obama administration in 2009, contributed usefully to the so-called Russia reset policy, which paid dividends in broader cooperation on matters such as Iran sanctions policy and logistical supply of NATO troops in Afghanistan. More to the point, it shored up American and Russian nuclear nonproliferation credentials as Washington sought to persuade other countries to eschew nuclear weapons, to sanction states pursuing the bomb illicitly, and to improve security measures on civilian and scientific nuclear activities worldwide.

But as Pifer and O'Hanlon outline in The Opportunity, there is more to do, and there is a nuclear arms control opportunity in 2013 and beyond. Pursuing one more U.S.-Russia bilateral treaty can further reduce long-range or strategic nuclear systems to perhaps 1,000 deployed warheads on each side. Even more significantly it can allow nonstrategic warheads finally to be captured by arms control. It can also save money if the American military does not need to maintain its nuclear arsenal at the unnecessarily high levels allowed under the New START Treaty. U.S.-Russian bilateral arms control, moreover, can spur and be coupled with multilateral efforts to involve the smaller nuclear powers, which might agree not to increase the size of their arsenals in the future, and to cut off the production of fissile material.

Such steps can also provide more information that will be relevant down the road when future policymakers decide when and if to pursue seriously a world free of nuclear weapons—a worthy goal in many ways, but one whose feasibility we cannot yet truly assess. The Opportunity provides the essential guide to understanding these complex and important issues as well as a series of practical and feasible policy recommendations to make America more secure.

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