Obama on the goal of a nuclear-free world

sunderkatwala Fri Jul 25, 2008 at 12:30:12 AM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Perhaps the most striking passage in Barack Obama's Berlin speech was the prominence he gave to his call for the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. That will sound radical to both American and European ears. But there is growing bipartisan and heavyweight support for this in the United States and elsewhere, including Britain, which trascends the controversial history of nuclear disarmament in British (and Labour) politics.



I have blogged on a couple of aspects of Obama's major  Berlin speech on my The World After Bush blog.

Perhaps the speech itself was always going to be something of an anti-climax. Diplomatic and campaigning conventions (and political prudence) meant that the critique of the Bush Presidency was rather a muted one. Still, if it was largely a speech of platitudes, they were always the right platitudes. One of the ironies of Bush's polarising Presidency is that a speech aimed at Americans can play so well with a European audience, simply by being against torture and  for working with allies.

But the most striking passage in Barack Obama's Berlin speech was the prominence he gave to his call for the goal of a world without nuclear weapons

Obama first made this commitment last Autumn in his New Beginning speech on national security. Its inclusion in this flagship European address reinforces the signal that an Obama administration intends to seriously engage with the growing bipartisan support among the great and the good of US diplomacy (and Henry Kissinger too!). John Kerry recently highlighted the issue as a key area of broad agreement between the Obama and McCain campaigns.

In Britain, this debate has been largely confined to diplomatic circles, though there has also been cross-party support from ex-Foreign Secretaries.

The way in which unilateralism divided the Labour party in the 1950s, then became a symbol of the party's unelectability in the 1980s, makes it difficult to imagine a Labour leader giving the issue as high a profile in a major campaign speech as Obama did today.

But the British government has signalled its support for this initative. Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gave a significant speech including this commitment in one of her final speeches as Foreign Secretary. The speech was given to the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference in Washington DC, and took place in the week of the Blair-Brown transition, and so was little noticed, except by specialist audiences, in Britain.

Perhaps the Obama commitment may now lead to a greater public debate on this side of the Atlantic too.





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Obama on the goal of a nuclear-free world | 2 comments (2 topical)

Re: Obama on the goal of a nuclear-free world (#1)

by rwendland on Fri Jul 25, 2008 at 01:36:32 AM GMT

This should not sound radical as it is merely a restatement of the 1968 Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, where the big 5 "undertake to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament". Restating this 1968 article anew as a goal can hardly be said to be radical.

The operative phrases he used seem to be

  • It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials;
  • to stop the spread of nuclear weapons;
  • and to reduce the arsenals from another era.

Stripped of rhetoric this seems pretty much the old approach of stopping other countries getting nukes, but hanging onto some of ours. The U.S. and Russia are already reducing stockpiles, so nothing new there.

Now if he promised to stop building new anti-missile defences that will ultimately force China and Russia to enhance their nuclear forces, that would be something new.

It is a rarely mentioned fact that China only has about 30 ICBMs capable of targeting the United States, and China keeps them unfueled seperate from the warheads. The new U.S. anti-missile defences are making these non-credible as a deterrent, so China will respond with better missiles, but how many? And you can guess how that will be played in the U.S. right-wing press.

And if China feels forced into improving its nuclear deterrent very much, India will feel it has to respond. And then Pakistan ...

So counter-intuitively effective anti-missile defences are a quite worrying development. As a Chinese diplomat once put it:

"When you invent a new shield, you will invent new types of spears. It always goes on like that. Therefore all new plans like this will not bring any self-benefit."


Re: Obama on the goal of a nuclear-free world (#2)

by Free Radical on Mon Jul 28, 2008 at 12:17:09 PM GMT

I think this is an extremely important thread (if readers agree please recommend it before it slips off the screen...).

It looks to me as though we are entering the most dangerous period since the end of the Cold War. The United States anti-missile defense shields are an extraordinarily dangerous and misguided development. Russia (whatever we think about the nature of its government) is being surrounded with potentially hostile NATO member states - can you imagine the possible consequences of Georgia being admitted to NATO? It is very easy to understand the Russian reaction, and also the Chinese response as you correctly point out. The Chinese diplomat is absolutely right.

We are also at a greater risk of regional nuclear war than ever - Israel/Iran (one sided of course), and Pakistan/India, which is a very complex and unstable situation partly as a result of our interventions in Afghanistan.

You make a very important point about obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty - our modernisation of Trident clearly goes against the spirit of our commitments under the treaty. At the same time I was stunned to see the TV footage of Gordon Brown addressing Israel's Knesset and telling them that Iran will not be allowed to become a nuclear power - this to the parliament of a country that reportedly holds 250 nuclear weapons. We should be advocating regional and global disarmament, dissuading the US from their more agressive stance, de-escalating the potential conflict with Russia (and China), refusing the US missile defence shield in Europe. But, Sunderkatwala points to Margaret Beckett's speech  - and I hope that still reflects the UK's underlying policy.

If Senator Obama is sincere in this shift in policy it would be extremely welcome - perhaps the most important US policy shift of all.


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Obama on the goal of a nuclear-free world | 2 comments (2 topical)