[Six ways that Biden can make the world safer in 2021.]
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE OUT OF CONTROL. BUT BIDEN CAN MAKE THE WORLD
SAFER.  
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Joseph Cirincione
January 17, 2021
The American Prospect
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_ Six ways that Biden can make the world safer in 2021. _

The Red Safe held the launch codes and keys, Steven Miller

 

Donald Trump left Joe Biden with a hot nuclear mess. Trump made every
nuclear danger he inherited worse by the hawkish policies he and
Republicans pursued.

Iran is accelerating its civilian nuclear program. North Korea is
expanding its nuclear military capabilities. They are not alone. Every
one of the nine nuclear-armed states is building new weapons. Yet
Trump destroyed or abandoned crucial security agreements restraining
these dangers and started or accelerated a half-dozen new weapons for
missions we don’t need with budgets we can’t afford.

Fortunately, there’s a great deal that Joe Biden can do, on his own,
in the first few days and weeks of his presidency.

He can quickly establish his authority over a nuclear weapons complex
spiraling out of control. He can reduce the risk of nuclear war by
accident, miscalculation, or madness; stop a new nuclear arms race;
shave hundreds of billions of dollars off the military budget; and
prevent new states from getting these weapons. By so doing, he can
make America and the world more secure.

REFORM COMMAND AND CONTROL. Nuclear weapons are often called “the
president’s weapons.” The commander in chief sets the policy,
requirements, and size of the U.S. arsenal. He has
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unfettered authority to launch one or all of the nation’s almost
4,000 operational nuclear weapons
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He need not consult with anyone; no one can counter his command.

Since Trump did not press the button during his four years in the Oval
Office, some may think that concerns about a madman destroying all of
humanity are overstated. In truth, we dodged
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nuclear bullet. As president, Biden should do all he can to ensure we
never again come so close to self-annihilation.

Biden does not need the permission of Congress to announce early in
his tenure that procedures adopted by past presidents in the fearful
days of the Cold War—including the first use of nuclear weapons in a
conventional conflict, missiles ready to launch in minutes, and the
sole authority of the president to fire these weapons—combine now to
present an unacceptable risk of nuclear disaster.

He can direct that U.S. policy is to never start a nuclear war, that
we no longer need to keep our weapons on hair-trigger alert, and that
henceforth the president will need the concurrence of another senior
official, such as the Speaker of the House, to launch nuclear weapons.

SAVE ARMS CONTROL. Biden can take an immediate step to curtail the
arms race by quickly agreeing
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Russia to extend the New START treaty for five years, due to expire in
February 2021. It is the only remaining limitation on U.S. and Russian
arsenals, after four years of Trump’s withdrawal from key strategic
accords. This will provide the basis for returning to the process
of principled dialogue
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Russia and other nuclear-armed states, including China, to freeze and
reduce global arsenals.

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Biden could re-sign the Open Skies Treaty
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Trump jettisoned and stop efforts to dismantle
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implement this security pact. He can state his hopes of working with
those nations supporting the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons
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into force two days after his inauguration, forging a united front
against nuclear dangers. As a Catholic, he can speak powerfully to the
immorality of nuclear weapons, eloquently voiced
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Francis and shared
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religious leaders around the world.

STOP THE ARMS RACE. Concurrently, Biden can also cancel or suspend
development, production, and deployment of the host of new nuclear
weapons [[link removed]] begun or accelerated by
Trump. These range from the very small to the hugely expensive, but
all are unnecessary overkill.

This would put into action the pledge
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the Democratic Party platform “to maintain a strong, credible
deterrent while reducing our overreliance and excessive expenditure on
nuclear weapons. The Trump Administration’s proposal to build new
nuclear weapons is unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”

Specifically, Biden can reverse Trump’s production and deployment of
a new submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead (the W76-2),
designed to make starting a nuclear war easier by reducing the yield
of the bomb. He could cancel Trump’s plans to build a new, unneeded
sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, halt the new air-launched
nuclear-armed cruise missile, and suspend programs to build a herd of
new nuclear warheads and to ramp up production of the plutonium cores
of these bombs.

Biden can quickly establish his authority over a nuclear weapons
complex spiraling out of control.

Most importantly, Biden should cancel
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contract to build a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that
Trump rushed
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in his final months in office. With a current (and certain to rise)
cost estimate
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$264 billion, this is the most dangerous, destabilizing, and unneeded
leg of the nuclear triad.

Designed for waging global thermonuclear war during the U.S.-Soviet
rivalry, ICBMs are obsolete. U.S. ballistic missile
submarines provide
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destructive power from their secure, undetectable patrols beneath the
world’s oceans, and strategic bombers provide greater flexibility.

CONTROL THE BUDGET. All contribute to a nuclear budget the Trump
administration inflated from the last Obama-Biden budget of $28
billion
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fiscal year 2017 to $44.5 billion
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fiscal 2021—part of the $500 billion the Pentagon plans to spend
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these weapons in this decade and $2 trillion over 25 years.

For greater savings, Biden could also delay costly and unproven
missile interceptor weapons. “Missile defense and defeat” programs
skyrocketed to an additional $20 billion this year, compared to the $3
billion annual budgets
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the Ronald Reagan years. Biden should abolish the Missile Defense
Agency—an in-house lobbying shop for these programs which has proven
unable to produce effective weapons—and devolve the programs back to
the military services from whence they came.

When the services no longer get free money but must pay for these
programs out of their own budgets, they will be incentivized to
restore discipline and prioritization to the procurement process.
Biden should also insist that any weapon pass rigorous operational
tests
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deployment, something no long-range missile defense system has ever
done.

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These moves will generate strong resistance from the nuclear weapons
contractors and from members of Congress whose districts and
states benefit
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the profits and jobs associated with their production and basing.
Analysts at think tanks
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contractor and Pentagon grants will howl.

Biden must not blink. By acting swiftly to cancel or suspend these
programs, and to cut
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overall Pentagon budget accordingly, Biden will create considerable
leverage for negotiations with Congress. He will arrive at a much
better deal by starting at zero and negotiating up rather than by
trimming the programs and negotiating down—or worse, leaving
Trump’s inflated Pentagon budget intact.

After these initial steps, Biden could announce a major nuclear
policy review
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National Security Council. He should not punt this issue to the
Pentagon by ordering yet another contractor-friendly nuclear posture
review
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Rather, with the White House controlling the process, Biden can ensure
that diplomacy and domestic needs are given equal weight to lucrative
contracts. He should review and finally implement the 2012 Joint
Chiefs of Staff study that concluded the United States could cut
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arsenal by one-third and still fulfill all nuclear missions, no matter
what the Russians did.

In this way, he might produce a “nuclear policy for the middle
class.” This would fit in nicely with his stated desire
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ensure that our foreign policy increases America’s economic
security. Shifting hundreds of billions of dollars from nuclear
weapons to climate change, health care, and infrastructure can give
him resources for the bold reimagining of America’s
national-security strategy he wishes
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chart.

If Biden wants to transform policy, he must appoint transformers.

STOP THE SPREAD. Stopping new nuclear weapons programs in other
nations requires tough negotiations, but here, too, Biden can do a
great deal on his own. He has pledged to bring the United States back
into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA)—the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever
negotiated—as long as Iran also returns to compliance.

He will have to do so early in 2021, before June presidential
elections in Iran freeze the ability of the current Iranian officials
to compromise and likely bring a hard-line president to power. To get
Iran back into full compliance, Biden will have to do the same, fully
lifting the sanctions
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decreed in violation of the pact. U.S. allies opposed Trump’s
leaving the accord and will welcome
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return.

This return, rather than continuing punishing sanctions, will give
Biden leverage to build on the JCPOA to negotiate further restraints
on Iran and to rebalance America’s relations in the Middle East.

North Korea is not as straightforward, but history shows that North
Korea will not be ignored. If Biden does not engage Kim Jong Un, he
gives Kim the ability to upset his agenda with missile launches,
nuclear tests, and other incitements. “Rather than passively
awaiting a provocation as a _fait accompli_, U.S. and South Korean
policymakers should work together proactively to preempt this
scenario,” advise
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Korea experts Frank Aum and George Lopez. Other experts, such as
former Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker, have detailed a step-by-step
process
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can freeze and begin to roll back the North’s weapons capabilities,
opening up the possibility of eventual dismantlement.

PERSONNEL IS POLICY. Finally, Obama’s ambitious nuclear agenda
was blocked
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part by the resistance of the nuclear bureaucracy, including some of
his own appointees. If Biden wants to transform policy, he must
appoint transformers.

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told
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that a key lesson from the Obama effort was that you “need to embed
that agenda in the government” with people trusted to “doggedly
implement the agenda.” Biden can weed out Trump moles trying to
burrow in, replacing them with experts who will push the policy
envelope.

The mental instability of Donald Trump exposed
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insanity of a system that allows one human being to destroy in minutes
all that humanity has constructed over millennia. With presidential
directives and a loyal staff, Biden can finally break the grip of Cold
War thinking. He can put in place new procedures, new budgets, and a
new vision to make us all safer. The world will thank him.

_JOSEPH CIRINCIONE is a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute
and a national-security analyst and author with over 35 years of
experience in Washington, D.C._

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