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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Talk of nuclear disarmament is making a serious comeback. Just in the past week, President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue, and now yet another blue-ribbon commission—this one co-chaired by former foreign ministers of Japan and Australia—has issued a high-profile report calling for disarmament.

The goal, of course, is superficially appealing and may even be achievable some day. But the United States, Australia, Japan and America’s other Asian allies would be well advised to think twice before embracing the report.

The paper released Tuesday in Tokyo by the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament is representative of international antinuke theology. Some of the ideas are useful, such as strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency as a proliferation watchdog and beefing up safeguards and verification mechanisms. Creating international nuclear fuel banks and shared management of enrichment, reprocessing and spent fuel storage facilities would make nonproliferation sense as well as supporting civil nuclear power in energy-thirsty Asia.

But other suggestions would be dangerous. Capping U.S. and Russian arsenals at 500 warheads is unrealistic given today’s world. An unequivocal “no first use” declaration would weaken American deterrence. And the recommendation that the Proliferation Security Initiative, currently a coalition of the willing to interdict nuclear shipments, be folded into the United Nations is a surefire way to neuter a successful tool.

The basic problem is that such efforts ignore the fact that the world is an unfriendly place. And no part of it looks more Hobbesian than Asia, riven with unresolved Cold War tensions, rapid advances in military capabilities and growing competition among rising powers. Some of those governments maintain and deploy nuclear weapons. Others want nuclear weapons, break their treaty commitments not to acquire them and will want them whether the U.S. has nuclear weapons or not. Look no further than North Korea.

This is why a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent is so important. This is partly a matter of self interest: Washington must prevent a major power from attacking America or seeking to coerce it with a nuclear threat. But it also needs to be mindful of the effects of U.S. nuclear policies on its Asian allies who face real threats—North Korea among the most pressing. The U.S. nuclear arsenal protects allies including Australia, Japan and South Korea, with whom America has treaty commitments. Not only does the U.S. nuclear deterrent shape the behavior of rogue nations such as North Korea toward these allies; the U.S. umbrella also removes the need for countries like Japan to seek nuclear weapons of their own.

Maintaining an effective U.S. nuclear deterrent will become even more important in Asia as China works hard to close the conventional military gap. This should be one of the top priorities of the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and should guide any response to Tuesday’s high-profile report. Deterrence is about holding at risk what potentially hostile governments value. So the U.S. and its allies also must make every effort to understand the leadership of adversaries or potential enemies— a challenge particularly with respect to secretive authoritarian regimes.

The nuclear deterrent is not the only element of America’s commitment to the region, of course. Forward-deployed U.S. forces—in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam—also contribute to security in Asia. So do combined exercises and missile defense systems. But the role of nuclear weapons is unique.

A credible U.S. nuclear deterrent means having an operational force, with capabilities for real operations and an operational plan. Washington also must retain forward-based systems in places where its allies view their presence as vital to their security— even if U.S. defense planners believe central strategic systems can do the job. Washington needs to maintain at least parity in strategic forces with Russia and must never allow those levels to fall to a point where allies believe the Russian or Chinese short-range nuclear arsenals will affect U.S. decision-making in a crisis.

The sages who crafted Tuesday’s report paid too little attention to all these realities in the name of a nuclear “peace in our time.” In his Nobel Peace Prize speech, President Obama proclaimed— rightly—that the U.S. has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades. He acknowledged that global stability rested on more than international treaties and declarations. The critical contribution of U.S. nuclear deterrence was left unspoken.

Additional reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals are possible and indeed desirable. But this disarmament game is dangerous. Potential enemies will be deterred, and allies assured, only if America is visibly confident in its nuclear posture. Asia’s future stability and prosperity will depend far more on this than on airy dreams of disarmament.

Mr. Miller, a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, a Washington- based consultancy, worked at the Pentagon and National Security Council from 1979 to 2005. Mr. Shearer is director of studies and a senior research fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.