Nuclear Security

The Problems and the Road Ahead

George P. Shultz, George P. Shultz, Sidney D. Drell, Sidney D. Drell, Henry A. Kissinger, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Sam Nunn

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780817918064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Concern about the threat posed by nuclear weapons has preoccupied the United States and presidents of the United States since the beginning of the nuclear era. Nuclear Security draws from papers presented at the 2013 meeting of the American Nuclear Society examining worldwide efforts to control nuclear weapons and ensure the safety of the nuclear enterprise of weapons and reactors against catastrophic accidents. The distinguished contributors, all known for their long-standing interest in getting better control of the threats posed by nuclear weapons and reactors, discuss what we can learn from past successes and failures and attempt to identify the key ingredients for a road ahead that can lead us toward a world free of nuclear weapons. The authors review historical efforts to deal with the challenge of nuclear weapons, with a focus on the momentous arms control negotiations between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. They offer specific recommendations for reducing risks that should be adopted by the nuclear enterprise, both military and civilian, in the United States and abroad. Since the risks posed by the nuclear enterprise are so high, they conclude, no reasonable effort should be spared to ensure safety and security.

CHAPTER 1
Reducing the Nuclear Threat:
Lessons from Experience

George P. Shultz

American Nuclear Society Meeting
November 11, 2013

My thesis:

1. The existence of nuclear weapons poses an existential danger to everyone in the world.

2. As we consider future developments, we must be ever vigilant of our, and our allies’, national security interests. We emphasize steps, such as getting better control of fissile material, as marking the way forward. We know that as long as there are nuclear weapons, the United States must have an arsenal that is safe, secure, and reliable.

3. Great progress has been made since 1986 in sharply reducing the number of nuclear weapons and in creating an atmosphere where further progress seemed likely—a golden moment.

4. Right now, and rather abruptly, that atmosphere has changed sharply, with new threats of proliferation and use. So the question I put before you is: What can we learn from the earlier positive experience? What has gone wrong and where do we go from here?

Let me start with a brief history.

Concern about the threat posed by nuclear weapons has preoccupied the United States and presidents of the United States from the beginning of the nuclear era.

President Truman introduced the Baruch Plan—a radical call for international control of nuclear weapons. The plan was stillborn with Soviet opposition.

President Eisenhower, in a 1953 address to the United Nations General Assembly, called for negotiations to “begin to diminish the potential destructive power of the world’s atomic stockpiles.” He pledged that the United States would “devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

At the end of the Eisenhower administration, the United States had 20,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union 1,600. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy spoke eloquently in favor of a nuclear-free world. But at the time of his death, the United States had 30,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union had 4,000.

President Johnson negotiated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and started what became the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). But as he left office, China had tested a nuclear weapon to become the fifth nuclear state, and the Soviet arsenal had increased to 9,000 weapons.

President Nixon succeeded in negotiating the first limitations on strategic offensive forces, but by the time he and his successor, President Ford, left office, the US arsenal had 26,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union’s arsenal had grown to 17,000.

President Carter, concerned about nuclear weapons, negotiated a second SALT Treaty but withdrew it from the Senate in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. By the time he left office, the Soviet Union had 30,000 nuclear weapons and the United States, 24,000.

President Reagan, early in his administration, asked the Joint Chiefs to tell him what would be the result of an all-out Soviet attack on the United States. The answer: it would wipe us out as a country. Would he retaliate? Yes. And he said many times, “What’s so good about keeping the peace through an ability to wipe each other out?”

So Reagan decided on what was regarded as a radical and unachievable objective: he called for the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) (the Soviets had 1,500 deployed and the United States had not yet deployed any). He also called for cutting in half the number of strategic weapons on each side. He publicly advocated the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. In 1983, the INF negotiations failed and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) put into effect a prior decision to deploy intermediate-range weapons if negotiations failed. The Soviets withdrew from negotiations. Tensions rose. Talk of war filled the air. Reagan, early in 1984, spoke in a conciliatory way about prospects for a better world. Gradually, the situation settled down and arrangements were made for the resumption of the annual visit by Foreign Minister Gromyko to Washington at the time of the UN General Assembly, a practice that had been discontinued by President Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Tensions began to subside and arrangements were made and successfully implemented in January 1985 to resume arms control talks. At this point, Mikhail Gorbachev came on the scene as the new general secretary of the Soviet Union. The first meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev took place in Geneva in November 1985. The main, and important, result was a change in atmosphere. The joint statement issued by Reagan and Gorbachev exclaimed, “A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.”

At the time, Soviet warheads outnumbered US warheads, and the total number of nuclear weapons in the world, including Great Britain, France, and China, came to about 70,000. Then came Reykjavik.

Reagan and Gorbachev met in a small room in Hofdi House for two full days of talks. I was privileged to sit with President Reagan and my counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, was beside General Secretary Gorbachev. Momentous developments were discussed and potential agreements identified. We were on the way to agreeing on the elimination of intermediate-range weapons and cutting in half strategic nuclear arms to equal levels on a satisfactory bomber-counting rule. At the end, they did not close any deal at that time because Reagan and Gorbachev disagreed about the issue of strategic defense. Nevertheless, we had seen the Soviets’ bottom line and the agreements subsequently came into effect. Little noticed at the time, but of deep significance, was an agreement reached in an all-night session between the first and second days of the meeting, negotiated by Roz Ridgway with Sasha Bessmertnyk, that human rights would be a recognized, regular item on our US-Soviet meeting agendas. This was a signal, not well recognized at the time, that the Soviet Union was ready for deeper changes, as subsequently advocated by Gorbachev.

I went to the United Nations on December 7, 1988, to hear Gorbachev give an address. The headline from his statement was the withdrawal of Soviet conventional forces from Europe, but I thought the most important message was that, as far as he was concerned, the Cold War was over.

The Cold War died, but died hard in the United States, as debate raged between President Reagan and me, observing that change was taking place in the Soviet Union, and others like former President Nixon and CIA Director Robert Gates, who thought we were wrong and naïve, and that the Soviet Union could not change. Our point of view prevailed in the end.

A golden decade or so followed, and by 2006, nuclear weapons had been reduced to about 30 percent of their numbers at the time of Reykjavik.

Following a conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Henry Kissinger, Bill Perry, Sam Nunn, and I wrote an op-ed calling for a world without nuclear weapons and identifying steps needed to get there. The op-ed was received positively throughout the world. Prominent statesmen signed on. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the creation of the conditions that would lead to a world without nuclear weapons. Yes, there were objections, but the trend of opinion was clear. And in the campaign for the 2008 presidential election, both candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, agreed on the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, and both have continued their advocacy of this objective.

But something has gone wrong. The atmosphere has changed. Proliferation and the potential use of nuclear weapons have once again come to the fore as primary concerns.

So now I ask you two questions. What can we learn from observing the forces that led to the golden moment when huge reductions in nuclear arsenals took place? Can we identify the key ingredients for a road ahead that can lead us toward a world free of nuclear weapons?

Here are some lessons from the golden moment.

First of all, there was in place a long and deep sense of unease about the devastating capabilities of nuclear weapons. In an odd way, the Chernobyl accident reinforced this feeling. I was impressed that in my first meeting with Gorbachev after Chernobyl, I found he had asked the same question I had put to my colleagues in the United States: What is the relationship between the vast damage we see at Chernobyl and what would have been produced by a weapon? The answer: A weapon would be far more devastating. Fukushima is causing some similar anxiety, but it is easy for people to go to sleep on the issue. So the problem of danger, unfortunately all too real, needs to be kept in public view.

Second, there needs to be some leverage in the picture that helps the argument. In an odd way, President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative provided some leverage. Consider this statement: In a lengthy letter from Reagan to Gorbachev on July 25, 1986, after the Geneva meeting but before the Reykjavik meeting, he wrote:

Significant commitments of this type with respect to strategic defense would make sense only if made in conjunction with the implementation of immediate actions on both sides to begin ­moving toward our common goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Toward this goal, I believe we also share the view that the process must begin with radical and stabilizing reductions in the offensive nuclear arsenals of both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Third, we need people at the top of key countries who can think big, act boldly, and carry their constituencies with them. This is difficult and takes a leader who will stand up to fierce opposition from a respected source. I remember vividly coming back to Washington from Reykjavik and practically being summoned to the British ambassador’s residence where my friend Margaret Thatcher “handbagged” me. She said, “George, how could you sit there and allow the president to talk about a world free of nuclear weapons?” I said, “But Margaret, he’s the president.” “Yes, but you’re supposed to be the one with his feet on the ground.” “But Margaret, I agreed with him.”

The idea was probably too bold for immediate implementation, but it was out there and some down payments emerged. The vote in the US Senate to ratify the INF Treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear weapons was 93 to 5.

Finally, and the real key, is the change in atmosphere. Beginning with Reykjavik and gradually rolling on, the Cold War came to an end, so whatever were the justifications for nuclear weapons diminished. People even began to look at the financial costs and think about how the money spent on nuclear weapo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Reducing the Nuclear Threat
• 2 Challenges to Maintaining Trust
• 3 Nuclear Risk
• 4 The Gipper’s Guide to Negotiating
• 5 What a Final Iran Deal Must Do
• 6 Is it Illogical to Work toward a World without Nuclear Weapons?
• Final Thoughts
• About the Authors
• Index