There's been a lot of needless hoopla over Obama's
"open mic" comment at the Nuclear Security Summit, including an
almost certainly ghost-written piece by Mitt Romney here at FP. Obama was overheard telling Russian President
Dmitri Medvedev that he "would have more flexibility" to negotiate a
deal on missile defense after the election, which is both correct
and hardly a state secret. The flap
illustrates the main point I was trying to make a few days ago, when I wrote about how the absurdly long U.S. election cycle was a major impediment to a
more effective foreign policy. (It may
also be an impediment to Romney's chances, because the longer the campaign goes
on, the more opportunities he has for foot-in-mouth moments that expose his
ignorance about foreign policy, including his silly comment about Russia being
our major geopolitical rival).
In any case, the incident got me thinking about how much the
arms control agenda has changed since the heyday of the Cold War. Back then, there was a serious constituency in
the United States pushing nuclear arms control, which saw it as key to
reducing the risk of nuclear war, managing the U.S.-Soviet relationship, and
dampening the danger of international conflict more generally. Arms control was intended to save some
money, preserve each side's second-strike deterrent capabilities, and help
stabilize the political relationship between Moscow and Washington. It was thus a key ingredient in the basic
agenda of détente, which sought to keep U.S.-Soviet competition within bounds. (One can argue about how effective it was, but it is worth noting that nuclear war didn't occur, and the U.S. and its allies triumphed over the Soviet Union without fighting a war with them.)
Accordingly, the main items on the arms control agenda involved
direct negotiations with our Soviet adversaries (the SALT and START treaties, the
INF treaty on intermediate nuclear forces in Europe, etc.). These efforts involved tough and protracted negotiations
between more-or-less equals (even though the U.S. and its allies were a lot
stronger than the Soviet Union and its various clients), and there was no
possibility of either side issuing ultimatums or imposing a one-sided deal on
the other. The other main arms control item
was the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and this arrangement resulted from tacit
collusion between the two superpowers to preserve their own nuclear
superiority. After all, the basic NPT deal
allowed nuclear powers keep their own arsenals (in exchange for pledges to
share nuclear technology and make some sort of long-term effort disarmament),
while putting in place a regime that made it much harder for other states to
join the nuclear club.
But what about now?
Since the end of the Cold War, the "arms control" agenda has
become decidedly one-sided. Yes, there's
been a not-very-significant "New Start" treaty with Russia, which didn't
alter the basic strategic relationship at all and which hardly anybody (including
Governor Romney) has paid much attention to. The real action in arms control has been a series of U.S.-led efforts to
get states to give up their existing arsenals or abandon existing nuclear programs. In the 1990s, we put
tremendous pressure on Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to give up the arsenals
they inherited from the former Soviet Union, and we eventually succeeded.
Then the United States nearly launched a preventive war against North Korea in 1994,
and did various deals (e.g., the "Agreed Framework") to try to head
off their development of nuclear weapons. We invaded Iraq in
2003 to stop Saddam's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" programs (which turned out to be fictitious -- our bad),
and have been ratcheting up economic sanctions and waging a covert war against
Iran to try to keep Tehran from getting too close to the nuclear weapons
threshold. And we keep saying "all
options are on the table," which is a threat to use force.
In short, instead of "arms control" being the
product of mutual negotiation, as it was in the Cold War, it now consists of
the United States making demands and ramping up pressure to get weak states to
comply. Instead of being primarily a diplomatic process aimed at eliciting mutually
beneficial cooperation (which might also help ameliorate mutual suspicions with
current adversaries), arms control has become a coercive process
designed to produce capitulation. This
approach may have worked in a few cases (e.g., Libya, although even there the
Bush administration made certain concessions to secure a final deal), but its
overall track record is paltry. After all, North Korea eventually went ahead and tested a nuclear
device, and escalating pressure on Iran has yet to convince its leaders to
abandon their enrichment program. And
as I've noted before, using military force would not eliminate Iran's ability to
develop weapons if it wishes, and could easily convince them that they had not
choice but to go ahead and weaponize.
Because material power is still the central currency in
world politics, this tendency doesn't surprise me all that much. When the United States has to deal with
near-equals, it understands that bargaining is necessary and that a successful
outcome requires patience and compromise.
But today, we think we can impose our will on almost anybody, so any
sort of compromise is regarded as some sort of craven appeasement. But even a country as powerful as the United
States cannot simply dictate to others -- as we should have learned by
now from our experiences with Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few others -- and a disdain
for genuine diplomacy (as opposed to merely issuing ultimatums and imposing sanctions) is
getting in the way of potential deals that could reduce the risk of
proliferation, dampen the danger of war, and enable U.S. leaders to turn their
attention to other priorities. Being
the world's #1 power confers many advantages, but it can also be a potent
source of blind and counterproductive arrogance.
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