Pressure Building from NATO to Remove US Nukes

We are happy to serve you a daily summary of the day's top nuclear policy stories each morning, with excerpts from the stories in bullet form.

Stories we're following today:

Allied Bid for Obama to Remove US European Nuclear Stockpile - AFP [link]

• European NATO allies are to urge President Barack Obama to remove all remaining US nuclear weapons from European soil, as domestic pressure grows to rid its soil of outdated Cold War-era aerial bombs.
• Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway will call "in the coming weeks" for more than 200 American warheads, mostly stocked in Italy and Turkey, to be taken back, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yves Leterme told AFP.
• A joint proposal by the five NATO members will demand "that nuclear arms on European soil belonging to other NATO member states are removed," Dominique Dehaene said.
• Former NATO chief Willy Claes and three more senior Belgian political figures urged such a call in Friday's Belgian press, citing "Obama's pledge to work to eliminate all nuclear weapons."
• "The Cold War is over. It's time to adapt our nuclear policy to the new circumstances," wrote Claes, fellow former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and former prime ministers Jean-Luc Dehaene and Guy Verhofstadt.

Diet Members Send Obama Nuclear Letter - The Japan Times [link]

• A group of nonpartisan Diet members sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday urging him to strive to limit the role of America's atomic weapons to that of nuclear deterrence.
• The letter asked Obama to state that the role of nuclear weapons should be limited to deterrence and asked that the U.S. nuclear policy not violate Japan's three nonnuclear principles of not possessing, producing or permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons into the country.
• “We strongly desire that the United States immediately adopt a declaratory policy stating that the 'sole purpose' of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter others from using such weapons against the United States or U.S. allies," the letter said, adding that the lawmakers were "firmly convinced that Japan will not seek the road toward possession of nuclear weapons if the U.S. adopts a 'sole purpose' policy."
• A total of 204 lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties, with the exception of the Japanese Communist Party, signed the letter, including former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki and former Environment and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi.

Why Iran's Dictators Can Be Deterred - Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post [link]

• [In the event of a US attack] the regime would gain support as ordinary Iranians rally around the flag. The opposition would be forced to support a government under attack from abroad. The regime would foment and fund violence from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Persian Gulf.
• It is important to recognize the magnitude of what people like Palin are advocating. The United States is being asked to launch a military invasion of a state that poses no imminent threat to America, without sanction from any international body and with few governments willing to publicly endorse such an action.
• I'm not sure which is worse for the Iranian people: rule by nasty mullahs or by thuggish soldiers. But we know this: Military regimes are calculating. They act in ways that keep themselves in power. That instinct for self-preservation is what will make a containment strategy work.
• For more on Zakaria's containment strategy, see his interview on CNN.com.

War Game Shows How Attacking Iran Could Backfire - McClatchy [link]

• This recent war game conducted at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, appears to dampen hopes for a simple solution to Iran's real-world nuclear challenge.
• The outcome underscores what diplomats, military officers and analysts have long said: even a "successful" airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities — setting the program back by two to four years — could come at a tremendous, unpredictable cost.
• One of the simulation's major findings was how aggressively the Iranians responded to the attack — more aggressively, some participants felt, than they would in real life — and how Washington and Tehran, lacking direct communication, misunderstood each other.

Nuclear Posture Review to Reduce Regional Role of Nuclear Weapons - Hans Kristensen for the Federation of American Scientists [link]

• A little-noticed section of the Quadrennial Defense Review recently published by the Pentagon suggests that that the Obama administration’s forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in regional scenarios.
• Three of the five NATO countries that currently host U.S. nuclear bombs on their territories are expected to ask for the weapons to be withdrawn
• Presumably, some coordination with Washington has taken place. Otherwise, if the NPR does not recommend a withdrawal from Europe, the five countries’ initiative will from the outset be in conflict with the Obama administration’s nuclear policy, which NATO likely will follow.
• Hans Kristensen is a Ploughshares Fund grantee.

Bipartisan Experts on Nukes: Nuclear Non-Proliferation and East Asia - Partnership for a Secure America [link]

• On February 18, PSA and Hudson Institute held a panel discussion on nuclear non-proliferation in East Asia, featuring Victor Cha, Patrick Cronin, Christopher Ford, and Jeffrey Lewis, and moderated by PSA Board member and former NSC official Mark Brzezinski.
• Cha expressed the opinion that the Kim Jong-Il regime will not denuclearize because of internal insecurities about regime stability, not because of worries about a significant external military threat.
• Ford, former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, expressed an opinion that, while the DPRK's nuclear program undermined the credibility of the global non-proliferation regime, it was not as severe a security threat to North East Asian stability as the rise of Chinese power.
• The final panelist was Lewis, the Director of the Nuclear Strategy Initiative at the New America Foundation. Lewis discussed the Sino-U.S. relationship in terms of nuclear arsenals, stating that the current Chinese government will never fully cooperate with the U.S. on nonproliferation if they believe the U.S. is attempting to negate their deterrence.
• To learn more about the discussion, watch the event video on PSA’s website.