[Mb-civic] US needs nuclear policy - Michael A. Levi - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  US needs nuclear policy

By Michael A. Levi  |  March 7, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

LAST WEEK, President Bush sealed a landmark nuclear deal with India. 
This week, the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors 
meets to confront the Iranian nuclear program. At the same time, 
Congress has been grappling with a raft of nuclear items in the 
president's budget. And all the while, the nuclear standoff with North 
Korea continues. This bursting nuclear agenda begs a question: Does 
America need a nuclear weapons policy?

When Henry Kissinger posed a similar question in his 2001 book ''Does 
America Need a Foreign Policy?" he meant to criticize the conduct of 
foreign policy as the sum of exercises in crisis management. A similar 
critique applies to American nuclear weapons policy today.

The alternative -- sorely needed now -- is a nuclear weapons policy 
based upon enduring foundations. The United States, of course, faces 
crises that must be addressed now. But it faced crises during the Cold 
War, and still sustained a core set of nuclear arms control principles 
for several decades. Today, a new set of fundamental principles -- 
whatever their specific details -- would provide coherence, direction, 
and predictability to American nuclear weapons policy. That would make 
American policy far more effective.

American nonproliferation policy is incoherent. The United States 
proposes to promote nuclear energy technologies in India that might 
increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, while it attempts to 
persuade Iran to curb its own activities. In recent years, it has 
explored a range of new nuclear weapons concepts while counseling others 
that nuclear weapons are anachronistic. There will inevitably be tension 
among elements of American policy, and even apparent double standards 
will sometimes make sense. But the current state reflects a lack of 
underlying principles to guide policy makers through these conflicts, 
with the result being a nonproliferation strategy that often works 
against itself.

American policy also lacks direction. During the Cold War, our aim was 
stability -- we sought to avoid nuclear war. But what is the shape of 
the nuclear world that the United States now aims to create? Is our goal 
to prevent all future proliferation? It might seem so, but we have 
already failed with North Korea. Is our aim to reduce the impact where 
proliferation occurs? If it is, we have not sufficiently engaged Iran's 
neighbors to prevent a chain reaction should Iran go nuclear. Is our 
object to prevent nuclear terrorism? Perhaps, but we have allowed Cold 
War-style concerns about Russia to interfere with efforts to secure its 
arsenal from terrorists. This lack of direction and long-term vision 
means that steps taken today will provide an inadequate foundation for 
the future.

All of this makes United States policy unpredictable, for allies and for 
enemies alike. As a result, friends are wary of following the United 
States -- they do not know where its policy will lead. In the case of 
Iran, this has led to a two-year delay in referring Iran to the UN 
Security Council. Every time the United States suggested making that 
move, its European allies protested that they did not know what would 
come next.

Principles would provide guidance in resolving tensions, thus producing 
more coherent policy; they would provide direction by defining long-term 
goals; and, as foundations that would last longer than specific 
policies, they would promote predictability in the American approach. 
They would also provide boundaries within which partisans could debate 
American policy, much as Cold War arms control principles once 
effectively channeled partisan debate.

Building long-term foundations will not obviate the need to resolve 
today's crises, and the administration has become more effectively 
engaged in addressing a range of problems. But gains today may prove 
illusory without a long-term plan.

Michael A. Levi, coauthor of ''The Future of Arms Control," is a fellow 
at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/07/us_needs_nuclear_policy/
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