by SCOTT SAGAN
In his famous address in Prague two years ago this month, President Barack Obama promised to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” and committed to making concrete progress toward “a world without nuclear weapons.” His critics derided this nuclear vision as a utopian fantasy, and claimed that US nuclear policy declarations were unlikely to have positive effects on other governments. But a careful analysis suggests otherwise.
A recent examination of key foreign governments’ responses to the Nuclear Posture Review — the official US government statement on the role of nuclear weapons in its deterrence and defense policy, released in April 2010 — showed that Obama’s policy significantly influenced a number of countries’ nuclear doctrines and diplomatic postures. Contrary to the critics’ belief, his review produced considerable progress toward a safer nuclear world. (This project, released in March 2011 as a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review, was conducted by 13 researchers from around the world, including myself.)
The new US nuclear posture. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review assured nations lacking nuclear weapons that the US would not use nuclear arms against them, provided those nations remain “in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.” It removed one whole class of nuclear weapons delivery systems — the nuclear-armed “Tomahawk” sea-launched land-attack cruise missile — from the arsenal; it called for further Russian and American nuclear arms reductions; and it promised that the US would only consider using nuclear weapons in response to nuclear attacks against the US or allied nations.
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