Military Official: Pay Attention to Pentagon Support for Nuclear Security Agenda

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Friday, May 21, 2010:

GOP Critics vs. the Pentagon - Lt. Gen. Robert Gard Jr. in The Lexington Herald Leader [link]

• A distressing trend has developed in relation to the politicization of U.S. nuclear weapons policy - President Obama is criticized, while Pentagon support for the president is ignored.
• The trend began in April 2009 when Obama delivered a speech in Prague calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that Ronald Reagan had the same objective and gave more than one speech with that theme, Obama was swiftly ridiculed on the right as "naive."
• The speech created an opening for all U.S. nuclear weapons policy to be similarly attacked in a larger effort to brand negatively the president's policies. These criticisms play politics with our national security and deliberately misrepresent the facts.
• Overall, this trend of disregarding the advice and analysis of America's military leadership with regard to nuclear weapons, while using the issue to attack the president, is a troubling development. For more than 40 years bipartisanship on nuclear arms control has served the nation well and provided stability to our policy making. That trend should continue.
• NOTE: Lt. Gen. Gard is Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Ploughshares Fund grantee.

Iran May Cancel Atom Swap Deal if Sanctions Passed - Reuters [link]

• Iran could cancel an accord with Turkey and Brazil to transfer some of its enriched uranium abroad if the U.N. Security Council approves a fresh round of sanctions against it, Reza Bahonar, a member of parliament said on Thursday.
• Turkey and Brazil -- both currently on the Security Council -- and Iran have urged a halt to talk of further sanctions because of the deal. But Western critics have described it as only a tactic to avert or delay sanctions.
• In a possible effort to get Iran to prove it was serious about a pact it backed out of earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Tehran on Thursday to send the details to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has said it will get in touch with the IAEA by May 24.

A Tale of Two Viewpoints - Joseph Cirincione in the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office Blog [link]

• The NPT conference, as any reader of this blog knows, is going better than most experts expected. The conference, however, is a minor issue in Washington, where debate remains focused on the New START treaty, missile defense and Iran.
• The Washington debate highlights the deep divide between progressives and far-right conservatives on the relationship between existing nuclear arsenals and the spread of these weapons to other nations.
• For the far-right, nuclear weapons are power we would be foolish to give up. For progressives, whatever benefits nuclear weapons may have provided in the past are now outweighed by the risks they present.
• The two views inform how both camps view the NPT Review Conference. For the far-right, it is an empty talk fest, where the global Lilliputians gang up on the American Gulliver. For the Obama administration, it is an essential part of a comprehensive plan to protect America.
• The majority of national security experts in the United States will see the Conference and the New Start treaty as progress and solid evidence that the new nuclear security agenda is working.

The Global Zero Road Tour: How it All Began - The Huffington Post [link]

• Suddenly, my life had a little more purpose to it. That's exactly how I felt when I decided to take on the large, but exciting responsibility of becoming a roadie with Global Zero, an international, non-partisan movement to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide.
• My name is Scott Ibaraki and I'm currently traveling the country as a Global Zero roadie, promoting the compelling new movie, Countdown to Zero, and building an international movement.
• Meeting a handful of Global Zero's founders and principals -- Her Majesty Queen Noor, Lawrence Bender and Valerie Plame Wilson -- at the end of training really brought everything together for us. Their words of encouragement and inspiration validated all of our hard work and made us proud to represent Global Zero's mission.
• Learning more about this issue only motivates me to work harder as I slowly turn into a bona fide "Nuclear Nerd." I genuinely believe that getting to zero is possible, but only if the general public can see past their antiquated, Cold War deterrence mentality and realize that a world devoid of nuclear weapons is truly a safer world.

A View from the Dark Side

The Dangerous Illusion of "Nuclear Zero" - The Wall Street Journal [link]

• President Barack Obama's vision of a world without nuclear weapons is certainly grand. The problem is that our current policies lack coherence and rest on other-worldly assumptions.
• The first condition would require ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, settling the Korean War, resolving Kashmir and the other India-Pakistan disputes, and defusing Iran's tensions with its neighbors and with the U.S. It also means solving any other significant conflicts that might arise.
• Proponents argue that embracing nuclear zero will increase cooperation from other countries against proliferators like North Korea and Iran. But what is this hope based on? America's embracing nuclear zero may take away a debating point from countries unwilling to cooperate with us, but it does nothing to change their interests.
• The president's visionary notions appear likelier to undermine rather than further his own goals of nuclear nonproliferation and stability.