One year after President Barack Obama announced his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, the administration is set to unveil the Nuclear Posture Review today. And that means we'll finally be able to issue a report card on the president's arms-control agenda.
For starters, there's the New START treaty, which is due to be signed this week in Prague. The pact commits Russia and the United States to cuts in the number of deployed warheads. The 2002 Moscow treaty obliged the two countries to reduce their arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads; the new treaty puts the ceiling at 1,550 warheads. It also places limits on delivery vehicles: The treaty imposes a combined limit of 800 deployed and nondeployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear missions, plus a separate limit on the number of deployed systems.
But there's some wiggle room, depending on how you do the counting: Each warhead on a deployed intercontinental ballistic missile or submarine-launched ballistic missile will count toward the total; but each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear missions, like the B-52 pictured here, will count as one warhead toward this limit.
When fully loaded, a single nuclear-armed bomber can carry a healthy assortment of nukes. As Peter Baker notes at The New York Times, that theoretically gives both sides flexibility to deploy as many or more warheads as permitted by the Moscow treaty.
So are the cuts real, or an accounting trick, as some arms-control wonks argue? Danger Room pal Jeffrey Lewis says it's time to chillax on the bomber counting. The new limits, he argues, will force the Russians and the Americans to stick to a more stable nuclear-force structure. "Yes, the bomber rules are silly," he writes. "Bomber rules always are. But as a whole, the limits are serious and meaningful."
And there may be serious implications for the nuclear weapons complex, the network of design laboratories and manufacturing facilities involved in maintaining the arsenal. The Nuclear Posture Review, will be closely watched at places like Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as at facilities like the Y-12 National Security Complex. Broad changes to the arsenal may have a very real impact on the work and mission of these institutions.
We'll also scrutinize the report for language about how the administration plans to maintain the arsenal without a return to testing. Excerpts published today in The New York Times suggest that the review will underscore the administration's intent not develop new nuclear warheads. "Life Extension Programs will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities," one excerpt states.
Update: The full Nuclear Posture Review is now online.
Photo: U.S. Air Force
