U.S. Will Not Recognize DPRK as Nuclear-Weapon State

The United States announced on Wednesday that it will not recognize North Korea as a nuclear-weapon country.  The U.S. urged North Korea to join China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in the six-party talks for nuclear disarmament.

The United States said on Wednesday that it would not accept the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a nuclear-weapon country, urging Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks process.

“We will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state. Its current path is a dead end,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, referring to the DPRK’s demand for “an equal footing with other nuclear weapons states.”

Senate Fight Ahead for START

United States Senate

After the release of the Nuclear Posture Review, the signing of the START treaty and the recent Nuclear Security Summit, many US senators still have questions regarding the plans the administration has with missile defense.  Many Republicans are weary that without these questions answered ratification of START may be difficult.

Of all President Barack Obama’s nuclear arms reduction initiatives — including his world without nuclear weapons and a test ban treaty — negotiating and ratifying an updated Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia was seen as the easiest step.

But in a congressional session so poisonous that even a jobs bill was in doubt at a time of soaring unemployment, securing the two-thirds vote of the Senate necessary to ratify the treaty is no sure thing.

Defense Officials Clarify Nuclear Review

After the recent release of the Nuclear Posture Review, defense officials had discussions about the specifics regarding the review.  Bradley H. Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense, and Navy Adm. John E. Roberti, deputy director for strategy and policy for the Joint Staff, spoke with journalist yesterday to clarify the logistics of the plan.

The Nuclear Posture Review has laid out a roadmap for the United States to follow in future nuclear dealings, and it also has raised a lot of questions in the public forum.

Bradley H. Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense, and Navy Adm. John E. Roberti, deputy director for strategy and policy for the Joint Staff, spoke with journalists on a DoDLive Bloggers’ Roundtable yesterday to clarify the particulars of the review.

With Arms Pact, Disarmament Challenge Remains

President Obama Arriving in Prague

The article shows the varying views on nuclear weapons. One side is that the world should be without nuclear weapons totally, while the other side is to continue to have them for the security of the United States and world.  Both arguments create a debate that continues even after the signing of the new START treaty today.

President Obama came to this medieval city last spring to lay out an audacious vision of “a world without nuclear weapons.” A year later, he arrives back here on Thursday to sign a treaty with Russia that envisions a world with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Under the so-called New Start treaty, the two powers will pare their arsenals but still deploy 1,550 warheads each, on top of thousands of others not covered by the pact. All of which raises this question: Nearly two decades after the end of the cold war, with terrorists, rather than Soviet despots, the main threat, why does the world still need so many weapons?

Iran Derides Obama’s ‘Cowboy’ Nuclear Stance

Iranian President Ahmadinejad

After the release of the Nuclear Posture Review, U.S. allies in Europe and Asia came out to support it, however Iran did not agree. Iranian President Ahmadinejad came out after the reviews’ release badmouthing the president and saying that Iran did not feel threatened.

U.S. allies on Wednesday lined up behind President Obama’s new policy aimed at reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict. But Iran — classified as a possible target under the guidelines — dismissed it as a “cowboy” policy by a political newcomer doomed to fail.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in the Slovak capital Bratislava for an official visit, did not address the issue before leaving for Prague to sign a landmark treaty Thursday with Mr. Obama aimed at paring U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear weapons by 30 percent. But Washington’s supporters in Asia and Europe welcomed Mr. Obama’s pledge Tuesday to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, refrain from nuclear tests and not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them.

Obama Embraces Missile Defense in Nuclear Review

The article talks about the newly released Nuclear Posture Review and the current administrations plans for missile defense in the future. Specifically, speaking about the new role of nuclear weapons.  ”The role of nuclear weapons is reduced in U.S. national security strategy, these non-nuclear elements will take on a greater share of the deterrence burden,” the review reads.

For an Obama team that has been skeptical of the past U.S. administrations’ efforts to rapidly deploy ballistic missile-defense systems around the world, missile defense sure does get star billing in the United States’ newly released report on overall nuclear strategy.

The document claims that missile defense is critical to allowing the United States to shift away from nuclear weapons, especially now that the U.S. will no longer threaten to use nukes to retaliate against non-nuclear attacks, such as from chemical or biological weapons.

Obama’s Nuclear Strategy Intended as a Message

President Barack Obama with Sec. of Defense Robert Gates

President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review, released yesterday, contains a new strategy that makes every nonnuclear state immune from any threat of nuclear retaliation by the United States.   However, it excludes Iran and North Korea. They are now labeled “outliers” rather than the Bush term of “rogue states.”  Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates stated, “There is a message for Iran and North Korea here,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

At the heart of President Obama’s new nuclear strategy lies a central gamble: that an aging, oversize, increasingly outmoded nuclear arsenal can be turned to the new purpose of adding leverage to the faltering effort to force Iran and North Korea to rethink the value of their nuclear programs.

The 50-page “Nuclear Posture Review” released on Tuesday acknowledged outright that “the massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the cold-war era” is “poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorist and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons.”

“Arms Control Amnesia”

Arms Control Amnesia

Check out this opinion piece from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In it, Dr. Keith Payne says that the United States is coming up on short end of the recently proposed arms-control agreement with Russia. Dr. Payne says we should not, “agree to pay Russia many times over for an essentially empty box” and argues that we are making cuts we don’t have to and that in doing so we could potentially be putting our long term security in danger.

His op-ed has five key points:

1. An arms-control agreement should come only after we have finished the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). As Dr. Payne puts it, “strategic requirements should drive force numbers; arms-control numbers should not dictate strategy.”
2. The provision to limit the number of launchers at 500 disproportionately hurts the United States because a significant number of Russian launchers are already planned on being removed from service as a result of their aging. This equates to the US making actual force cuts while Russia isn’t doing anything it wasn’t already planning on doing.
3. The agreement says nothing of tactical nuclear weapons of which Russia has nearly a 10 to 1 advantage over the US.
4. Russian President Medvedev has been quoted as saying that strategic reductions are only possible if the US addresses Russian concerns over the US plan to “create a global missile defense.” Equating strategic arms-control to a limited missile defense system that has no capabilities against Russia is wrong but it will put additional pressure on the Obama Administration to cut the Third Site in Europe. While Russia is making this link between missile defense and arms-control, Dr. Payne says it will be a, “measure of US success will be to avoid such linkages.”
5. Before any new agreement is voted on by the Senate, “Russian violations of its existing arms-control agreements must be addressed.”