The NPR and Declaratory Policy

The Nuclear Posture Review released last week turned out to be far from the transformative document President Obama lobbied for. In his Prague speech of April 2009, the President declared he would "reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy." It could be argued he somewhat succeeded in that objective.



To truly understand the changes it is necessary to understand the previous policy. President Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara introduced the policy of flexible response, which committed the U.S. to pursuing a range of responses in case of conventional or nuclear aggression. This policy morphed into the practice of issuing ambiguous declarations of U.S. response policies. By adopting a policy reminiscent of Schelling's "threat that leaves something to chance," the U.S. often kept adversaries off-balance and unsure about potential U.S. responses. This can be seen in President H.W. Bush's warning to Saddam Hussein about using WMD and in President W. Bush's promise to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression with all means necessary. This calculated ambiguity therefore kept adversaries guessing and provided U.S. presidents with substantial freedom of action as events developed.

The 2010 NPR has made two basic changes to U.S. declaratory policy: 1) the U.S. promises not to respond to a chemical attack with nuclear retaliation and 2) the U.S. promises not to use nuclear weapons against any country in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The NPR states that countries that use "CBW against the United States or its allies and partners would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response... Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S. capacities to counter that threat." Since the U.S. is "reserving the right" to change its policy with regard to biological attacks, it is fair to say that the threat of nuclear retaliation still exists for countries that would use BW. Only chemical weapons use seems to be immune from the prospect of nuclear retaliation. This is a reasonable development, given the fact that CW are hardly weapons of mass destruction when compared to biological and nuclear weapons. On the battlefield they are much easier to defend against and in most scenarios their impact is relatively localized. The one area where this policy may prove problematic is in extended deterrence. Many allies do not feel this way about CW, for understandable reasons. North Korea, Syria, and Iran have lots of chemical weapons. Do our allies in Seoul, Ankara, or Abu Dhabi consider chemical attacks undeserving of nuclear retaliation?

Declaring that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against countries in full-compliance with the NPT is a reasonable policy, if somewhat difficult to interpret. In most instances, the U.S. would have no desire or need to use nuclear weapons against a country that was not pursuing an illicit nuclear weapons program. Examining two case studies is instructive. In 2002 it was revealed that Iran had a covert nuclear weapons program. The IAEA Board of Governors did not find Iran in noncompliance with its NPT obligations until 2006. Would the U.S. have renounced preemptive nuclear strikes to destroy Iran's capability in that time period? Currently, Syria has not fully cooperated with IAEA inspectors investigating the nuclear facility destroyed by Israel in 2007. Syria has not been found in noncompliance by the IAEA Board of Governors. If it used CBW against Iraq or Turkey, would the U.S. take nuclear retaliation off the table because an IAEA Board weighed down by political pressure failed to put it on notice?

This brings us to an important point regarding this aspect of the policy. Should not a state be required to be in compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention, as well as the NPT, to avoid the possibility of nuclear retaliation? Otherwise it seems possible that BW could become "the poor country's usable nukes." It becomes a foreseeable possibility for a state to forgo nuclear weapons and be in full compliance with the NPT while developing and deploying robust biological and chemical weapons. Would not this be attractive for countries that cannot acquire nuclear capabilities but want an asymmetric deterrent anyway (look in Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia). To those who say conventional U.S. forces can provide the same level of deterrence and retaliation as nuclear weapons, what do the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the potential one on the Korean peninsula, say about trusting conventional strength to produce quick and adequate victories?

I conclude by arguing that the declaratory policy section of the NPR is not the travesty it could have turned out to be ("no first use," "sole purpose of nukes is to deter nuclear attack"). The exclusion of chemical weapons from the list of reasons to launch nuclear retaliation is reasonable from an American perspective, but I hope we consulted with our friends and allies to make sure they felt the same way. There are currently few (if any) countries in *actual* compliance with the NPT that we worry about as a threat. The NPR refrained from defining "compliance" (Board of Governors referral, noncooperation, suspicions), which leaves the U.S. with enough flexibility to argue that a country is non-compliant (and thus eligible for nuclear attack) even if it has not been found in noncompliance by the IAEA. I do worry that some countries may read a green light into this, and decide to abide by the NPT while developing alternative means of deterrence - but here again, the U.S. "reserves the right" to change as threats develop.

Overall, the "Reducing the Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons" section of the NPR has turned out to be acceptable declaratory policy. It is also good to keep in mind that what a country says one day may not be what it does the next. Even if an NPT-compliant state launched a chemical or low-level biological attack that killed as many people as the 9/11 attacks did (however unlikely such a result would be), I doubt we would feel completely bound by this policy document. At the end of the day, ambiguity seems to remain a central pillar of our declaratory policy.