The End of Arms Control
The 2000 presidential election was like none other in modern American history. Although the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore, won the overall popular vote, the Electoral College vote, which constitutionally decides the election, came down to the State of Florida and some contested ballots from a handful of counties. In a legal showdown worthy of a Greek drama, the final decision on the disposition of the votes was made by the United States Supreme Court, which after a delay of over a month, ruled that Governor George W. Bush had won the Florida election, and with it the presidency.
The accession of George W. Bush to the position of president of the United States represented a political victory for the Republican-dominated hardliners, who had, since before the administration of President Reagan, opposed arms control (ironically, they were sustaining a policy position that, in its modern embodiment, was first embraced by Democrats such as Scoop Jackson). The global viewpoint of these conservative thinkers was best captured by the abortive Defense Policy Guidance document prepared by the Pentagon in 1992, when Dick Cheney was serving as the secretary of defense. Cheney was now the vice president and had established a working relationship with newly elected President Bush that gave the vice president’s office unprecedented influence and control over the national security policies of the United States.
The two drafters of the 1992 DPG were likewise ensconced in influential positions—Scooter Libby as Cheney’s chief of staff and Paul Wolfowitz as the deputy secretary of defense. President Bush rounded out his national security team by selecting Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense under President Ford and the author of the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report on the threat posed by ballistic missiles, as the new secretary of defense, a clear signal the missile defense was going to be a major priority of the new Bush administration. His choice for national security advisor was Condoleezza Rice, who had served on the National Security Council of President George H. W. Bush as the director of Soviet and East European affairs and had been deeply involved in the issues pertaining to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union as well as German reunification. Until her selection as national security advisor, Rice had served as the provost for Stanford University. The sole moderate on the Bush national security team was Colin Powell, whom Bush selected to be secretary of state. Powell had an extensive national security resume, having served previously as the national security advisor to President Reagan from 1987 until 1991, and later as the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the administrations of both President George H. W. Bush and President Clinton.
The national security policy of the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush was designed from the outset to represent a break from the past. In the mind of its framers, the confused multilateralism of the Clinton era was to be replaced by a more streamlined, decisive unilateralism designed by intent to exploit the preeminent position held by the United States in international affairs. Philosophically this meant avoiding the entanglement of complicated arms control agreements and instead doing what was required to better promote American national interests. Operating from the simplistic view that the United States was imbued with a moral right of self-assertion in relation to the rest of the world and equipped with a natural inclination to do good, the Bush team set out to redefine how America would operate in relation to the rest of the world. Multilateral institutions such as the United Nations were viewed with suspicion or even outright derision, while traditional alliances such as NATO were addressed from the standpoint of how they could best support the policies and interests of the United States.1
The Bush administration took as its operating instructions the words of the newly elected president during his inaugural address of January 20, 2001:
We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors. The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.2
The new Bush team entered office with a sense of certainty on what direction it wanted to take on a few critical issues, including the matter of arms control. As a candidate, George W. Bush had stated that, if elected president, he would “offer Russia the necessary amendments to the ABM Treaty so as to make our deployment of effective missile defenses consistent with the treaty.”3 However, shortly after coming into office, the Bush administration began pushing for a series of new missile defense plans, including the construction of a missile defense “test bed” in Alaska (designed to counter a North Korean missile attack as postulated by the Rumsfeld Commission report) that would directly challenge the terms of the 1972 ABM treaty. As early as May 1, 2001, President Bush, in a speech delivered at the National Defense University, was talking not about remaining “consistent” with the ABM treaty but rather about moving “beyond” that treaty.4
The missile defense system that the Bush administration was proposing to field was a far cry from the space-based, advanced technology-driven “Star Wars” system that had been proposed by President Reagan. Instead, the Pentagon was envisioning a more limited system, at least at the start, which combined ground-based interceptors with advanced surface-to-air missiles based on U.S. Navy ships to create a “shield” that could shoot down a small number of missiles launched from any potential rogue nation. On the surface, the concept was attractive: an insurance policy against the irrational acts of nations operating outside the framework of international law and human decency. But in embracing this moralistic argument, the Bush administration ran up against the reality that a missile defense shield had long been viewed as a force of destabilization, a modern-day Maginot Line that would compel potential adversaries threatened by the notion of a nuclear-armed America hiding behind a missile defense system to find the means of overcoming that shield, thereby setting off an expensive arms race. The fact that the technology the Bush administration was planning to deploy, even in its scaled-down version, was still untested only further underscored the arguments of those opposed.
But the Bush team, headed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and backstopped behind the scenes by Deputy National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley (who had worked on ABM issues during the presidency of George H. W. Bush), firmly believed that some form of defense shield was better than no defense shield at all. The ABM treaty was a flawed product of times long past, they noted, and Russia today was not the Soviet Union of the past, in terms of either intent or capability. New threats were emerging, manifested in the present by nations such as North Korea and Iran, with no guarantees that even greater threats would not emerge in the future. As such, the United States should no longer be constrained by Cold War thinking.5
In his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, held in July 2001, President Bush drove home this point of view, advocating reworking the ABM treaty in exchange for even greater strategic force reductions. The two leaders quickly expressed a sense of mutual admiration for one another, referring to each other as “friend.” But behind the warm rhetoric lay ideological differences that made it clear that the Bush ABM policy would not be warmly received in Moscow. The Russian president continued to call the ABM treaty the “cornerstone” of arms control. Another issue of great sensitivity was that of NATO expansion. In a June 2001 tour of European nations, including several Eastern European stops, Bush made a series of speeches in which he spoke of NATO expansion. Such expansion, Bush said, was no longer a question of whether but a question of when. “Russia should not fear the expansion of freedom-loving people towards her borders,” Bush declared.6 The former Warsaw Pact nations of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were already in line to become NATO members, and talks were underway with the three former Soviet Baltic Republics (Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia) for their membership as well.
For his part, Putin put the United States on notice that Russia would not look favorably toward any continued expansion of NATO, which the Russian president said had outlived its usefulness. “There is no more Warsaw Pact, no more Soviet Union, but NATO continues to exist and develop,” Putin said. The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe was “not caused by any political or military necessity” and created a security situation that put pressure on both Europe and Russia—pressure that was counterproductive in the post–Cold War era. The Russian president made clear his preference for either the disbandment of NATO or the creation of a new framework that had Russia joining as an equal partner.7
Led by Condoleezza Rice, who argued that Russia no longer carried the influence it did when it was part of the Soviet Union, the Bush administration shrugged off the Russian protests as largely irrelevant, since in their view Russia was not in a position economically or militarily to challenge the United States. This mindset was clearly demonstrated during the visit of the Russian deputy chief of staff, General Yuri Baluevski, to the United States in August 2001, for the purpose of discussing possible amendments to the ABM treaty that would enable the United States to test a limited missile defense system. Baluevski continued to propose a solution that was linked to the conditions and restrictions set forth in the ABM treaty. His U.S. counterparts responded by stating bluntly that in order to accomplish what it wanted, the United States viewed the ABM treaty, if it was to continue to be referred to, as existing in name only.8
The ABM treaty was not the only arms control regime coming under closer scrutiny by the Bush administration. An effort undertaken from 1994 through 2001, to strengthen the capability of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) to detect violations with a level of confidence equal to that of verification systems in place for comparable nuclear and chemical weapons treaties and accords ran afoul of unilateral American interests. An ad hoc committee was formed to create a mechanism of declarations and on-site inspection, in the form of a BTWC Protocol, which would provide greater information about, and improved access to, dual-capable biological facilities so that they could not be misused for the production of biological weapons. While not seamless, the proposed protocol was designed to deter illicit biological weapons activities by making it more complicated for potential proliferators to operate outside of their BTWC obligations.9
The primary problem was that while the United States was comfortable with demanding increased access to facilities and personnel operating in other nations, it would not permit the kind of reciprocity required of multilateral agreements. The United States was engaged in a whole host of classified defense-related work in biological defense, involving the actual manufacture of live biological agents, which would have to be declared (and which technically was a violation of the BTWC itself). Likewise, American industries that were involved in biological research, such as pharmaceutical companies, were loath to allow international inspectors access to their proprietary information. The United States demanded a double standard that would close American companies and activities but open the rest of the world, including Europe, to inspection. When the BTWC balked at this double standard, the Bush administration withdrew from the BTWC Protocol negotiations and demanded that the effort to produce a protocol cease and desist.10
On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack on the United States of America forever changed how the Bush administration would approach issues pertaining to national security, including arms control. An Islamic fundamentalist organization known as Al Qaeda, led by a Saudi Arabian named Osama Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zuwahiri, operating from Afghanistan but employing support cells in Germany and the United States, orchestrated the simultaneous hijacking of four U.S. airliners, which were then taken under control by hijackers who had received rudimentary flight training and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City (two aircraft) and the Pentagon (one aircraft). The fourth aircraft, which was targeting the U.S. Capitol, crashed into a field in southwest Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the attacks, and the administration of President Bush found itself engaged in a war that was unprecedented in American history.
The September 11, 2001 attacks were not the first conducted by Al Qaeda on American targets. In August 1998 Al Qaeda orchestrated the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and was behind the suicide attack on a U.S. Navy ship, the U.S.S Cole, in Yemen on October 12, 2000. But the September 11 attacks were the first carried out by Al Qaeda on the soil of the United States, and that fact, coupled with the horrific scale of the damage done, combined to create a psychological impact on America that had not been seen since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The major difference between the two events, however, was that in 1941 the United States was able to clearly define who would be held accountable for the attack—Imperial Japan, followed by Nazi Germany, when it joined Japan in declaring war against the United States. President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against Japan (and later Germany), and the United States subsequently mobilized to wage global war against a well-defined enemy.
In 2001, forty years later, the enemy was not so well-defined. Other than a few thousand Al Qaeda Islamic extremists operating inside Afghanistan, there was no physical manifestation of an enemy for the United States to declare war on. Rather than confronting the physical reality of a nation state, or groups of nation states, the Bush administration found itself squaring off against an ideology, Islamic fundamentalism, which in itself was nebulous and lacked physical form beyond the bands of fighters operating in Afghanistan. Within a month the United States had deployed forces into Southwest Asia to begin the process of destroying Al Qaeda and bringing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants to justice (“dead or alive,” according to President Bush). The target list was expanded to include bringing down the Islamic fundamentalist regime of the Taliban, a coalition of fundamentalist religious clerics who were able to seize power in the aftermath of the chaos and anarchy that had gripped Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in the late 1980s. By December 2001 the Taliban had been evicted from power, and the Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan either destroyed or scattered. Osama Bin Laden had narrowly escaped capture and was believed to have escaped to a sanctuary in the lawless expanse of Pakistan’s Northwest Territories.
The impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11 on U.S. foreign relations and national security policy was sweeping and manifested itself almost immediately. In a speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on September 20, 2001, President Bush declared war on terrorism not just in Afghanistan but around the world. “Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Invoking the memory of the Second World War, when America and its allies fought the forces of world fascism, President Bush proclaimed that “we will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence and every necessary weapon of war—to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.”11
In response, Congress passed sweeping legislation, in the form of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave the president the tools he claimed he needed to wage this war. NATO also responded, by invoking Article V of its charter, declaring that the attack on the United States was an attack on all of NATO. The United States and NATO were now inextricably linked in combating the U.S.-proclaimed war on terror. In the simplistic formulation of President Bush, who pointedly told Congress and the world, “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” U.S. national security prerogatives were now not only paramount but sacrosanct.12 Waging the global war on terror had become a crusade, with all of the intensity and fervor of past crusades. Woven into this crusade were a whole host of complicated topics, including missile defense and NATO expansion, which were now considered part and parcel of the global war on terror, and as such no longer subject to debate and discussion.
The first opportunity to observe how the new post–September 11 mindset of the United States would affect U.S.-Russian relations came on November 13–15, 2001, when Russian President Putin visited President Bush in Washington and later at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas. The two leaders discussed a wide range of issues, including the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, U.S.-Russian economic relations, and Russia’s relationship with NATO. But the main focus of the meetings was on the issue of missile defense, coupled with new strategic force reductions. While Putin had come into the meetings still holding out that a compromise could be reached that permitted the United States to test its missile defense system within the framework of the 1972 ABM treaty, the Bush administration, led by National Security Advisor Rice, made it clear that it was, in the opinion of the United States, time to “move on,” beyond the ABM treaty. Noting that the ABM treaty no longer represented a foundational role in defining U.S.-Russian relations, Rice, together with Secretary of State Colin Powell, signaled that its demise was all but certain.13
On the issue of strategic force reductions, the Bush administration made it clear that it not only sought deep cuts in the numbers of deployed nuclear warheads (from the 7,000 currently deployed to a level of 1,700 to 2,200 within ten years) but also wanted to avoid the complicated and drawn-out processes normally associated with arms control agreements of this nature. President Bush told Putin he was looking for an informal, nonbinding arrangement that would reduce the strategic arsenals of each nation but provide flexibility for each nation to adapt to unforeseen developments in the future. A treaty structure, such as provided for under START, was no longer desirable or needed because the United States and Russia, according to Bush, had “a new relationship based on trust.”
For his part, Putin, while embracing the strategic force reductions (and committing Russia to levels on par with the U.S. force structure), made it clear that Russia would prefer a more formal arrangement codified in the form of a treaty. “The world is far from having international relations that are built solely on trust, unfortunately,” Putin responded. “That’s why it is so important today to rely on the existing foundation of treaties and agreements in the arms control and disarmament areas.” Putin was commenting not just on START, but also on the ABM treaty.14
But it was too late to save the ABM treaty. On December 13, 2001, President Bush announced that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty, triggering the six-month notification process called for by that agreement. “I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks,” the president said.15 Bush had hinted as much to Putin during their meetings in November, so the Russian president was not taken completely by surprise. Putin, in response, labeled the U.S. decision a “mistake” and urged the United States and Russia to move quickly to create a “new framework of our strategic relationship.” Putin also addressed the Russian people, assuring them that the U.S. decision “presents no threat to the security of the Russian Federation.”16
President Bush’s articulation of deep strategic reductions was enabled by the results of a Nuclear Posture Review conducted by the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This review was ordered by National Security Presidential Directive 4 (NSPD-4). In seeking a nuclear force of around 2,000 warheads, the Bush administration had decided to sustain the force level structure put in place by President Clinton. The United States would get rid of the MX missile and limit the number of B-2 bombers to twenty. The Minuteman-III missile force would be kept at five hundred, and the number of Trident submarines armed with D-5 missiles reduced from eighteen to fourteen (the other four were to be converted to cruise-missile launch platforms). The B-1 bomber would be retained, but its nuclear mission was eliminated. The B-52 bomber fleet would be maintained at seventy-six, all of which were nuclear capable.17
But although the Bush administration sustained the nuclear force structure it inherited from the Clinton presidency, it changed the nuclear posture of the United States away from the concept of adaptive strategy, in which nuclear weapons were de-targeted while placed in a state of operational readiness, with the ability to target as required either in accordance with the existing nuclear war plan or in response to contingencies as they developed. Based on the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which was updated following the September 11 attacks, the United States put forward new nuclear weapons planning guidance, in the form of National Security Presidential Directive 14 (NSPD-14), published in early 2002, which resulted in the publication of SIOP-03. But rather than an actual single integrated operations plan, the new SIOP-03 was a series of seven separate nuclear war plans, one each for Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. And while nuclear weapons were no longer actively targeting either Russia or China, after September 11, given the heightened concern over WMD and rogue states, nuclear weapons and delivery resources were allocated to each of the five “rogue state” plans.18
In addition to a radically new nuclear weapons war plan, the Bush administration, as part of its review, initiated a program to study the need for a new “responsive infrastructure” for the design and deployment of a new generation of nuclear weapons in significantly shorter time periods than in the past. These weapons would “augment” existing nuclear weapons already deployed and would be designed for use against hardened targets and underground facilities. While the Bush administration was touting the fact that it was reducing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal to the lowest level in decades, in fact it was integrating nuclear weapons into the military response profile in a manner not seen since the early days of the Reagan administration. Rather than heading away from the edge of the nuclear abyss, the Bush administration was taking a giant step forward toward making the horror of nuclear weapons employment not only a possibility but a reality.19
In February 2002, in recognition of the need to respond to Russian sensitivities over formalizing strategic arms reductions, the Bush administration announced that the United States and Russia would begin a process to codify the agreed-on arms cuts. This process would result in a “legally binding” agreement, either in the form of a treaty or in the form of an Executive Agreement that could be commented on by the U.S. Congress. The Bush administration argued that the United States had no interest in dictating the size and composition of Russia’s strategic forces, and given the fact that America could be facing new dangers in the future, it wasn’t prudent to solidify the size and makeup of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as well. Russia continued to insist that whatever forms such an agreement took, it would have to be subject to the approval of the legislative branches of both countries. Both sides were looking for an agreement of ten years’ duration, which would use the verification mechanisms in place under START. In response to President Putin’s threats to reequip Russian missiles with MIRVs if the United States went ahead with its plans to withdraw from the ABM treaty, Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated that such a move was of no concern to the Bush administration, which no longer viewed Russia as a threat and therefore would not interfere with whatever moves Russia deemed necessary to defend itself.20
On May 24, 2002, President Bush travelled to Moscow, where he met with President Putin to sign a new treaty, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT, which represented the codification that Russia had been seeking. The SORT document consisted of only five hundred words, as opposed to the hundreds of pages comprising START. The document was vague on what kind of warheads were to be covered and how warheads would be counted. However, by referring to past statements by Bush and Putin, SORT clearly only covered warheads actually mated on operational missiles, not warheads held in reserve. SORT also failed to specify whether the warheads removed under the agreement should be destroyed or not. Russia wanted them destroyed in a verifiable fashion, while the United States wanted to keep the warheads in storage, thereby retaining the ability to upload them if the strategic situation warranted.21
Although SORT was touted as a “reduction” treaty, critics in Congress noted that it did not require the destruction of a single warhead. So while the Bush administration claimed that it had reduced the operational nuclear warheads in the U.S. inventory to 2,200, the fact was that another 2,400 warheads would be retained in reserve, some of which could be returned into service within weeks of a decision, with the entire arsenal made operational within a three-year period. It appeared that the Bush administration was using arms control as a cover for maintaining a larger, more robust nuclear capability than publicly advertised. Adding to the concerns that SORT was simply a vehicle to disguise a more capable nuclear war plan, the treaty had a three-month withdrawal clause, as opposed to the six-month clause in START. This time period coincided with the time it would take to make ready substantial portions of the reserve nuclear stockpile. The Bush administration approached SORT with a sense of finality. While the Russians continued to press for follow-on negotiations to clarify the many outstanding issues not covered by SORT, the Bush administration made it clear that any additional negotiations designed to apply even more constraints on the U.S. nuclear arsenal would not be welcome.22
The timing of SORT was not an accident. On June 13, 2002, the United States formally withdrew from the ABM treaty, as promised by President Bush. The next day, June 14, Russia declared that it would no longer abide by START-2, meaning that Russia would seek to build new missiles and equip those and their current inventory with MIRVs as they saw fit. The Bush administration was not concerned by the Russian moves. By design, SORT provided the United States with the ability to wait and see which direction the Russians took on rearmament. If at any time the Russian capability became worrisome, the United States could, at relatively low expense, simply pull its reserve warheads out of storage and upload its Minuteman-III and Trident D-5 missiles, rapidly offsetting any moves the Russians might make. In any event, many inside the Bush administration believed that the Russian economy would not be able to sustain the expense of a new arms race, and thus felt that Putin’s threats were empty.23
By the summer of 2002, the issue of the ABM treaty was rapidly overtaken by the growing crisis in the Middle East concerning Iraq. In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration had made the case that removing Saddam Hussein from power was consistent with the goals and objectives of the global war on terrorism. In their thinking, Saddam’s continued refusal to permit the return of UN weapons inspectors created the conditions for Iraq’s reacquisition of WMD. Since the United States had labeled Iraq a “State sponsor of terror,” and had accused Saddam Hussein of collaborating with Al Qaeda (although with vague and unsubstantiated information), the Bush administration claimed that an unacceptable nexus had been created whereby Saddam Hussein would be able to produce WMD for use by Al Qaeda to attack the United States and its allies. Even when Iraq agreed, in September 2002, to permit the return of UN weapons inspectors in an effort to demonstrate that it was in compliance with its disarmament obligation, the Bush administration continued to allege that Iraq maintained a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles to deliver them and that it was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
On September 20, 2002, President Bush released the National Security Strategy of the United States, and in doing so introduced the world to how America viewed itself in the post–September 11 era. In keeping with the theme that the Cold War was finished, the new strategy abandoned the traditional concepts of deterrence and instead embraced a forward-leaning strategy that emphasized pre-emption of problems before they could manifest themselves into actions that harmed the United States or its allies. America’s Cold War opponents were no longer the enemy. President Bush stated that the new threat came in the form of radical terrorists and rogue states that sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction with which to attack the American homeland. This required a new strategy, which had the United States identifying and destroying any terrorist threat before it reached the United States. The tools the Bush administration was bringing to bear against this new problem included law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, and the military. It was on the military solution that the president focused the most, declaring that America must maintain its position as the sole remaining superpower on earth by deploying an armed force so powerful and advanced that potential threats and rivals would not even contemplate competing with, or confronting, the United States.24
This newly defined supremacy was more than simple rhetoric, as the situation with Iraq demonstrated. The return of UN weapons inspectors was delayed while the United States pushed for a new UN Security Council resolution that would set the conditions of Iraqi compliance and that could serve as the justification for military action against Iraq should the United States deem Iraq to be in violation of that resolution. In this effort the United States was joined by the United Kingdom. However, the remaining three permanent members of the Security Council—Russia, France, and China—were not in support of creating an automatic “trigger” for war and instead insisted that any resolution passed by the Security Council defining Iraqi disarmament obligations would have to be followed by a second resolution specifically authorizing the use of force against Iraq, if such a move was deemed necessary. In the giveand-take negotiations that followed, a resolution was crafted, SCR 1441, which, while not explicitly authorizing the use of force if Iraq failed to comply, remained ambiguous on the issue of a second resolution.
While the Security Council debated the issue of a resolution on Iraq, the United States worked with its NATO allies to gather support for any future military move against Iraq. NATO was decidedly split on the issue, with the governments of France, Germany, and Belgium firmly opposed to a conflict with Iraq, and those of the United Kingdom and Spain supportive. But NATO had three new members—Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic—that were loath to go against the United States on the issue of Iraq. When UN weapons inspectors finally returned to Iraq in November 2002, they quickly undermined many of the U.S. claims about Iraq’s reconstitution of WMD capability by inspecting facilities named by the Pentagon as being actively involved in WMD work, only to find that the facilities in question were derelict or clearly involved in non-proscribed activity. By the end of 2002, France and Germany were siding with Russia and China in insisting that UN weapons inspectors be given all the time they needed to verify Iraqi compliance. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who assumed a very public role in defending the Bush administration’s claims against Iraq, derided the null findings of the UN inspectors in Iraq, declaring that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and noting that “the fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq’s WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq’s non-cooperation.” Rumsfeld went on to explain: “We do know that Iraq has designed its programs in a way that they can proceed in an environment of inspections and that they are skilled at denial and deception.”25
In December 2002 Rumsfeld pushed NATO to support any U.S. effort against Iraq. Faced with continued obstruction by France and Germany, Rumsfeld observed, “Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem. But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe. They’re not with France and Germany on this, they’re with the United States.”26 Germany and France, Rumsfeld said, represent “old Europe.” NATO’s recent expansion meant that “the center of gravity is shifting to the east,” Rumsfeld said. It wasn’t just Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic that Rumsfeld was referring to. NATO had extended invitations to Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Slovenia, as well as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. These nations were looking to join NATO as early as 2004 and were more than prepared to back the United States on Iraq as the price of admission. This new direction for NATO was ominous from a Russian point of view. Not only was NATO expanding to the borders of Russia and, in the case of the Baltic Republics, into the territory of the former Soviet Union, it was assuming a worldwide militaristic stance. NATO was in active negotiation with the United States and the Afghan government about the prospects of NATO taking command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which had been created by UN Security Council resolution in December 2001. This action would represent a major new role and mission for NATO, one that took it out of Europe and into a nation that bordered the former Soviet Union. Now NATO was expanding further and talking about the potential of military involvement in Iraq. The concept of NATO as a defensive alliance was rapidly fading, especially from Russia’s perspective.
The situation in Iraq was viewed as a defining moment by the Bush administration. From their perspective, Iraq was a prime example of how WMD in the hands of a hostile state, or terrorists, could threaten the United States and its allies. The Bush national security team viewed the multilateral approach for resolving a situation like Iraq, via the United Nations Security Council, as unsatisfactory. What was needed was an American plan to deal with this emerging threat. In December 2002 the Bush administration published such a plan, in the form of NSPD-17, the “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.” The United States, NSPD-17 announced, “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons. We must accord the highest priority to the protection of the United States, our forces, and our friends and allies from the existing and growing WMD threat.”27
NSPD-17 set forth a three-tiered plan for dealing with the global WMD threat, which focused on counter-proliferation actions by the U.S. military and “appropriate civilian agencies”; enhanced “traditional measures,” such as diplomacy, arms control, and multilateral agreements; and what they called “consequence management” within the United States itself—the ability to effectively respond to any use of WMD within America’s borders. NSPD-17 sought to ensure global compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).28
The call for the embrace of multilateral institutions inherent in NSPD-17 clashed with the Bush administration’s lack of support for the UN weapons inspection process in Iraq. Rather than embrace multilateralism, the Bush administration aggressively pursued its unilateral objective of regime change in Iraq, using the threat of WMD as a facilitating device. By mid-March 2003, the U.S. preparations for war with Iraq were in place, and President Bush instructed the UN to remove its inspectors from Iraq, citing Iraqi noncompliance despite the fact that the UN inspectors had found no evidence of Iraqi retention or reconstitution of WMD. Even though the United States was unable to secure a second Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq, President Bush, backed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, ordered the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed in early April 2003, and by May 2003 the United States had installed a provisional occupation government. Russia strongly condemned the invasion and subsequent occupation. By the end of May, with all of Iraq under the control of the U.S. and British military, no WMD had been uncovered. The primary argument cited by President Bush in support of his decision to invade had turned out to be wrong. Contrary to the claims made by the Bush administration and others, Iraq had in fact disposed of the totality of its viable WMD stocks in the summer of 1991, just as Saddam Hussein had claimed to the UN weapons inspectors. Not only were there no WMD in Iraq, but the claims of a link between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda were likewise found to be false. There was no nexus between Iraqi WMD and the forces of terror after all.
The stunning speed at which the United States was able to oust Saddam Hussein at first provided substance to the rhetoric put forward by the Bush administration in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States. Fresh from their ouster of the Iraqi dictator, the Bush administration set its eyes on resolving the issue of the remaining “rogue states”—Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Libya. Of the four nations, North Korea was perhaps the most problematic. In October 2002 the Bush administration began pressuring North Korea about its nuclear and missile programs. In particular, the Bush administration claimed that North Korea had a secret uranium-enrichment program operating outside of the 1994 Agreed Framework. On November 14, 2002, President Bush declared that the oil shipments to North Korea would be suspended if Pyongyang did not halt its nuclear ambitions. By December 2002 North Korea threatened to restart its nuclear power plants, claiming it had no choice given the halting of oil shipments. North Korea ordered the IAEA to begin dismantling its monitoring system at the Yongbyon power plant; when the IAEA refused, North Korea dismantled them itself. North Korea evicted the two IAEA inspectors who oversaw the monitoring effort and began moving nearly 1,000 nuclear fuel rods to Yongbyon, where they could be used to manufacture plutonium for a nuclear weapon.29
In early January 2003 the IAEA demanded that North Korea readmit the IAEA inspectors and cease its nuclear weapons activities. North Korea, in response, announced on January 10 that it would withdraw from the NPT, a replay of the scenario that had brought the United States and North Korea on the verge of war in 1994. However, in 2003 the United States had its sights set on Baghdad, not Pyongyang, and the Bush administration was forced to limit its response to diplomatic maneuvering and rhetoric. Tensions between North Korea and the United States continued to rise, and in April 2003 North Korea admitted it had reprocessed spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon plant and was able to extract enough plutonium for an atomic bomb. America’s new nonproliferation policy was being put to the test, especially as it grew increasingly apparent that the United States had deployed its military to confront a threat (Iraq) that had no WMD programs, while another threat (North Korea), which appeared to working toward a nuclear weapons capability, was dealt with diplomatically.30
Another looming proliferation problem appeared to be building with Iran. In August 2002 reports from an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance, indicated that Iran had constructed a uranium enrichment plant outside the framework of its safeguards agreement with the IAEA. The IAEA immediately demanded that its inspectors be granted access to this site, and Iran agreed. It soon became apparent that Iran was embarked on a major program for the enrichment of uranium. Iran contended that this program was for peaceful nuclear energy. The Bush administration, on the other hand, contended that given the secrecy in which Iran had surrounded its nuclear program, the only reasonable conclusion that could be drawn was that Iran was pursuing an illicit nuclear weapons capability. Iran was also pursuing its own indigenous ballistic missile program and had deployed a missile, the Shahib-2, which possessed a range of 750 kilometers. Another missile, the Shahib-3, was in the final stages of testing and could achieve ranges of around 2,000 kilometers. These missiles gave Iran the ability to reach targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel. If the missiles were armed with nuclear warheads, as the Bush administration feared was Teheran’s objective, then the entire region could be destabilized. Iran denied having a nuclear weapons program and contended its missiles were for self defense only.31
Flush from the perceived military victory in Iraq, and with the issues of North Korea and Iran looming on the near horizon, President Bush traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a short summit meeting with Russian President Putin. The two presidents exchanged the instruments of ratification of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT, also known as the Moscow Treaty. The treaty thus went into force at that time. The treaty itself had been signed in May 2002 but had gone through a lengthy and tumultuous ratification process in the legislative bodies of both Russia and the United States, where both sides were concerned about the brevity of the treaty and the lack of detail. In the end, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of ratification on March 6, 2003, unwilling to confront the president on the eve of the Iraq conflict. The Russian Parliament followed suit on May 24, wanting to give Putin a vehicle to smooth over relations with the United States, which had soured because of the invasion of Iraq.32
In his comments to the media following the exchange of documents, President Bush declared his intent to pursue constructive joint projects with Russia in the field of ballistic missile defense, while proclaiming that the United States and Russia would “intensify efforts to confront the global threats of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, that threaten our peoples and freedom-loving peoples around the world.” Bush pressed Putin for Russian assistance on the issues of North Korea and Iran. For his part, Putin was more muted, simply noting, “This current summit meeting yet again confirmed the fact that there is no alternative for the cooperation between Russia and the United States, both in terms of ensuring our domestic national agendas and in terms of cooperation for the sake of enhanced international strategic stability.”33
While Russia and the United States agreed to reduce the size of their respective nuclear arsenals, the Bush administration was moving forward with a new nuclear weapons employment doctrine, derived from the criteria established in NSPD-17, the “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.” One of the major new aspects to this doctrine was that it did away with the SIOP concept of integrated planning for nuclear war, replacing it instead with an operational planning process that focused on “conflicts.” The difference was more than just semantic. The military rationale behind this decision was that a nuclear “war” implied an exchange of nuclear weapons between two opponents. In a nuclear “conflict,” only one side—the United States—would be employing nuclear weapons. Nuclear war involved the complimentary processes of “deliberate planning” and “adaptive planning,” in which a war would be waged in accordance with a set plan for weapons release (deliberate), followed up by intelligence-generated targets (adaptive). However, “adaptive” planning was always preceded by “deliberate” planning. The new U.S. doctrine for nuclear war placed an emphasis not on adapting to an existing plan, but rather on developing operational plans in response to an imminent crisis, a process known as “crisis action planning.”34
The Bush administration contended that the new reality of the post–Cold War era created a multipolar world that was more unpredictable and dangerous than what the United States had confronted when all it had to deal with was the Soviet Union. “Crisis action” planning lowered the threshold for the employment of nuclear weapons by creating an operational framework that could envision the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in a nonnuclear environment, even one involving nonstate players such as terrorist organizations. In the post–September 11 world, the United States was not going to wait for terrorists to strike again before responding, especially if the terrorists were armed with WMD capability. Instead, the United States would seek to identify the terrorist threat early on and preempt it, even if the weapon used for preemption was nuclear. The new nuclear war plan, known as OPLAN 8022, identified four conditions where the preemptive employment of nuclear weapons could occur: if an enemy intended to use WMD against Americans or allied forces of civilians; if there were an imminent attack expected in the form of biological weapons that only the effects of a nuclear detonation could destroy; if there were a need to strike at buried or hardened bunkers or facilities involved in the production of WMD, or the command and control of weapons so armed; and to demonstrate America’s will and intent to use nuclear weapons. While recognizing that the preemptive use of nuclear weapons would lead to widespread condemnation of the United States, the Bush administration had determined that there was no legal obstacle to such use if a determination was made that the situation was warranted.35
In the end, the reduction of nuclear warheads as a result of the Moscow Treaty did not reduce the likelihood of a nuclear conflict, but rather increased it. In a bipolar situation such as existed during the Cold War, any use of nuclear weapons would have triggered a catastrophic chain of events that would have devastated each nation and the rest of the world. In a perverse way, the larger numbers of warheads actually made war less likely, given the consequences. In the post–September 11 era, especially after the reductions ordered by SORT, the Bush administration was convinced that the United States was the only viable nuclear power remaining in the world. The Russian nuclear arsenal was no longer capable of delivery a first strike, knockout blow. However, given the hard-kill capabilities of both the Minuteman-III and the Trident D-5, the same could not be said about U.S. nuclear capability. The American nuclear capability was robust enough to deal effectively with Russia and China, while still retaining enough of a reserve to handle any emerging threat that might exist. With the consequences of employing nuclear weapons all but eliminated in terms of physical damage to the United States, all that mattered was whether a given situation warranted a nuclear response. The weak link in this thinking was the “crisis action” aspect of the planning process. Accurate intelligence data and astute assessments were required. Whether this would actually be the case in terms of the input provided to the nuclear planners was very much an open question, given the precedent of Iraq (where the Bush administration got it completely wrong on the issue of WMD).
The new OPLAN 8022 nuclear war plan brought with it the inherent need for a new generation of nuclear weapons designed not for massive Cold Ward hardened-silo destruction, but rather for precision-based attacks against smaller, buried facilities. OPLAN 8022 defined a need. Now the Bush administration sought to fill the requirement. In the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the U.S. military assessed its options for attacking what it believed were “vast underground complexes” inside Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was thought to be hiding. One of the options considered was to design and field a new generation of nuclear warheads, the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or RNEP. Afghanistan gave way to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was accused of burying secret WMD factories deep underground. Again, in the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, these allegations turned out to be false. But there were plenty of real underground facilities in the targeted “rogue nations,” from the underground nuclear facilities in North Korea and Iran to the buried chemical weapons plant in Libya. There was a role for the RNEP. The main problem was that the United States had, since 1992, been engaged in a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, and without the ability to test, RNEP would remain a dream.36
The comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) remained tied up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where the chair, Jesse Helms, made sure it would never see the light of day. The CTBT was viewed by its proponents as a foundational element of any viable nuclear nonproliferation effort. At the 2000 NPT Review Conference in April–May 2000, all participating nations, including the United States, had agreed to a thirteen-point plan that sought, inter alia, the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, ratification of the CTBT, continued observation of a moratorium on nuclear testing until the CTBT entered into force, and “the principle of irreversibility to apply to nuclear disarmament, nuclear and other related arms control and reduction measures.”37
The 2000 NPT Review Conference took place during the administration of President Clinton. Under President Bush, the United States backed away altogether from the road map put together in 2000, undermining the 2005 NPT Review Conference, which closed without even being able to assemble an agreed statement. The Bush administration made it clear that it would not support ratification of the CTBT. One of the reasons for this was that, by 2005, President Bush was giving serious consideration not only to the development and deployment of a RNEP weapon, but also to an entirely new class of nuclear weapons known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW. The concept behind the RRW was to design a new family of nuclear weapons that are highly reliable, easy, and safe to manufacture, monitor, and test. The RRW would make use of a common design and shared components that could then be adapted to various implementation requirements, depending on delivery vehicle and desired effects.38
A major argument put forward by the Bush administration for the RRW was the need to guarantee the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile. While the 2002 SORT had the United States reducing its operational nuclear warheads to around 2,200, when one counted nondeployed warheads and spares, the total number of available nuclear warheads expected to be retained numbered 6,000, comprising seven separate designs. The RRW would utilize one basic design that could then be rapidly adapted, repaired, or modified as requirements evolved, providing the U.S. nuclear arsenal the flexibility needed to respond to changing military needs without maintaining many additional warheads. Bush asked for, and received, funding in 2005 for the RRW. Nevertheless, many in Congress recognized the slippery slope toward undermining the NPT and CTBT if the RRW were allowed to proceed unrestrained, so instead Congress specified that “any weapons design under the RRW program must stay within the military requirements of the existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear tests.”39
While the Bush administration pursued the concept of a new nuclear weapons design, the issue of global nuclear weapons proliferation continued to grow. The situation in Iraq had deteriorated badly in the aftermath of the initial period of invasion and occupation, and the U.S. experiment in preemption had stalled. There were some successes in the field of nonproliferation, including the unraveling of a black market network run by the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Dr. A. Q. Khan, which supplied the enrichment programs of Iran and Libya and was suspected of helping North Korea as well. Dr. Khan was arrested by Pakistani officials in early 2004. Likewise, a U.S. military operation conducted in October 2003 as part of the Bush administration’s so-called proliferation security initiative uncovered a shipment of nuclear weapons–related production materials shipped from A. Q. Khan to Libya. In the aftermath of the resulting investigation, and faced with the reality of the U.S. policy of preemption as practiced in Iraq, Libya acknowledged having nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and opened these programs to inspection and dismantlement by the international community. In exchange, the United States agreed to end its economic embargo and work to facilitate Libya’s re-entry into the world community as a member in good standing.40
The situation concerning the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea was not nearly so positive. Iran continued to insist that its uranium enrichment program was intended for peaceful nuclear energy, and it refused to comply with the U.S.-backed decision of the IAEA to permanently suspend enrichment activities. The United States tried to make a case against Iran by citing traces of highly enriched uranium detected by the IAEA in Iran, but the case collapsed when the IAEA determined that these traces were linked back to Pakistan’s nuclear program, not Iran’s. Despite finding no evidence to sustain the allegations put forward by the Bush administration that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, the IAEA Board of Governors voted in February 2006 to have the Iran issue transferred to the Security Council, where the United States hoped it would be able to levy even harsher punishment on Iran if it continued to insist on operating its own indigenous enrichment capability.41
The situation in North Korea was much more dangerous. After withdrawing from the NPT in 2003, North Korea continued to threaten to make a nuclear weapon. Many in the Bush administration viewed this as a gambit on the part of Pyongyang to pressure the United States into giving North Korea greater concessions as part of a diplomatic deal to get North Korea to agree to return to the NPT. In early October 2006, North Korea made good on its promise and carried out an underground test of a nuclear device. After a flurry of threats about the possibility of a war with the United States, North Korea’s leaders reversed course, and by December 2006 they were once again seated at a negotiation table, participating in the six-party talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China, and the United States.42
As the Bush administration sought to shore up its policies targeting the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, and in doing so citing the importance of both these nations complying with the NPT, it carried out completely contradictory policy directions when dealing with the nuclear weapons programs of both Pakistan and India. The Clinton administration had imposed economic sanctions on both India and Pakistan in the aftermath of their respective nuclear tests in 1998, but within a year these sanctions had all but disappeared, having been eased incrementally by the United States in order to help improve diplomatic relations (Pakistan) and economic ties (India). The danger represented by these two adversaries having nuclear weapons came to a head in 1999, when Pakistan launched a military offensive against Indian positions in the disputed territory of Kashmir. A summit between Pakistan and India on the issue of Kashmir collapsed in the summer of 2001, and shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States, an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, backed by Pakistani intelligence, brought the two South Asian nations on the verge of a nuclear exchange.43
The Bush administration viewed Pakistan as a critical ally in the global war on terror, especially in terms of prosecuting military operations in Afghanistan, and as such it moved to assist Pakistan in securing its nuclear arsenal in the aftermath of September 11. This action created U.S. recognition of Pakistan as a nuclear weapons power, greatly undermining the legitimacy of the NPT. With India, the Bush administration was interested in improving economic ties with one of the world’s largest developing economies. It was also interested in using India as a counter to Chinese growth in the region. India was facing an economic crisis driven by its insatiable appetite for energy to feed its growing economy. Continued U.S. sanctions on nuclear-related technology hurt India. The United States was required by the NPT, as a nuclear weapons state, to supply nuclear technology only to those nations who were signatories to the NPT. India was not, and furthermore, India had developed a nuclear weapons capability. While the Bush administration pushed the NPT as a vehicle to punish Iran and North Korea, it conveniently forgot about the NPT when it came to India. President Bush, in July of 2006, pledged to supply India with the nuclear technology it desired. India was to be treated with the same benefits as befitting a signatory to the NPT, even though it refused to sign that treaty. This action violated not only the spirit of the NPT but the letter of the law. Nevertheless, faced with the potential of $100 billion in increased trade between the United States and India, the U.S. Congress approved the deal in October 2008.44
November 2006 witnessed important midterm elections in the United States, which saw the Democratic Party win back control of the House of Representatives. Plagued by a growing debacle in Iraq, an unresolved conflict in Afghanistan, and a scandal over the torture of people detained by the United States as part of the global war on terror, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld resigned from office. His departure represented the final shuffle in the national security team of President Bush, which began following the 2004 presidential election with the resignation of Colin Powell as secretary of state. Condoleezza Rice was appointed as Powell’s replacement, and Stephen Hadley, Rice’s deputy at the NSC, was made national security advisor. President Bush appointed Robert Gates, the former CIA director under President George H. W. Bush, as the new secretary of defense. President Bush now had a team that would not only prosecute the war on terror but also move to implement other programs that his administration had previously committed to, such as missile defense, but that had been overwhelmed by the events in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In early January 2007 the Bush administration announced that it would be seeking to deploy a missile defense system into Eastern Europe, basing interceptor missiles in Poland and associated radar systems in the Czech Republic. This action was explained as necessary in order to protect the United States and Europe from the growing threat presented by Iranian missiles, in particular the Shahib-3. While governments of both Poland and the Czech Republic endorsed the proposal, Russia strongly condemned it. Moscow warned that any missile defense system deployed so close to the borders of Russia would alter the strategic balance in a decisive fashion. The Russian military disputed the claim that the missile defense system was designed to deal with an Iranian threat and noted that if the United States were to go through with the proposal it would be treated as a military threat against Russia.45
The extent to which the proposed missile defense shield irritated Russia became clear when, in February 2007, President Putin addressed a conference in Munich, Germany, declaring that President Bush had embarked on a policy of “almost unconstrained use of military force,” which increased the proliferation of nuclear weapons rather than curtailed it. Putin strongly condemned the U.S. decision to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. But he saved his strongest criticism for the expansion of NATO, noting that NATO nations were quick to charge Russia with violations of the Adapted CFE treaty of 1999 based on the presence of Russian troops in the Republics of Georgia and Moldova, but ignored the fact that the United States had created so-called flexible frontline bases in Eastern Europe, holding up to 5,000 troops in each. These actions put NATO frontline troops right on the border with Russia, Putin noted. The Russian president questioned the reasoning behind NATO expansion, expressing doubt that it had anything to do with securing Europe. NATO had violated the guarantees made when Germany was unified that it would not seek to deploy NATO forces outside the borders of NATO. “Where are those guarantees now?” Putin asked.46
The Russian President’s harsh upbraiding of the United States and NATO represented a growing frustration within Russia that the United States was behaving more and more like a global hegemon and that NATO was being used as a tool to facilitate American objectives. Putin described the U.S.-Russian disarmament effort as “stagnating” and criticized the United States for failing to be transparent about its intentions regarding its sizable reserve of nuclear warheads. All of these actions served to put Russia on the defensive, at a time when the Russian economy, fueled by a massive infusion of income brought in by Russia’s sale of oil and natural gas, was improving. Russia’s status as the major supplier of natural gas to Europe also factored into Moscow’s growing sense of entitlement when it came to garnering the respect of NATO and the United States.
The Bush administration largely downplayed Putin’s remarks and likewise shrugged off a warning from senior Russian military officials that not only would Russia deploy short-range missiles into the Russian European enclave of Kaliningrad to target any missile shield deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic, but also Russia might be compelled to unilaterally withdraw from the INF treaty, creating conditions under which Russia might once again develop and deploy intermediate nuclear forces that threatened Europe. And in a speech to the Russian parliament in April 2007, Putin indicated that he was considering a “moratorium” on the CFE treaty.47 At the G-8 Summit in Germany in June 2007, Putin offered Bush an alternative to the proposed radar installation in the Czech Republic, offering up a Russian radar system in Azerbaijan that was closer to Iran and thus more in conformity with the stated objective of the proposed missile defense shield. The United States brushed the Russian offer aside.48 With U.S.-Russian relations plummeting to their lowest levels since the end of the Cold War, Putin traveled to Kennebunkport, Maine, in early July 2007. There he offered up another Russian radar for use in the missile shield, this one located in Southern Russia. Bush didn’t reject the Russian offer outright but reiterated his objective of deploying the missile defense system as planned in Eastern Europe.49
On July 14, 2007, President Putin formally announced Russia’s intent to withdraw from the CFE treaty, triggering the 150-day notifi-cation period required by the treaty. Putin cited the failure of NATO to abide by the terms of the Adapted CFE treaty, together with the U.S. decision to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, as the primary reasons for his action.50 In October Putin continued to put pressure on the United States regarding the missile defense shield, reiterating a threat to withdraw from the INF treaty during a visit by Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates to Moscow to discuss the proposed European missile defense system. The United States insisted that the system as designed posed no threat to Russia. Putin and his military disagreed, stating that there could only be one target for the proposed missile defense system, and that was Russia. In November President Putin formally suspended Russia’s observance of the CFE treaty.51 Piece by piece, the framework of arms control treaties that had secured peace and stability in Europe was collapsing. With NATO continuing to press for expansion, indicating that it was considering extending invitations to Georgia and Ukraine, it was only a matter of time before it ran up against Russian opposition that took a more substantive form than rejecting Cold War–era treaties.
Recognizing that the current situation with Russia was untenable, President Bush pushed for one last summit with Vladimir Putin, held in early April in the southern Russian city of Sochi. Bush unveiled a plan for a “strategic framework” with Russia that would seek to alleviate Russian concerns over his administration’s plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. Included in the framework was a plan that would allow for the deployment of the missile interceptors but not activate them unless Iran developed a long-range missile that could threaten Europe. Putin responded cautiously to the proposal. Another issue discussed between the two presidents was the looming December 2009 expiration of START. While the provisions of START had long ago been complied with by both sides, the treaty brought with it an extensive verification regime that was being used to monitor the new round of arms reductions carried out in accordance with the 2002 SORT. The two presidents also discussed Russia’s decision to suspend its observance of the CFE treaty. Bush lauded the summit as a success, although nothing of substance had in fact been agreed.52
In August 2008 the Republic of Georgia sent its troops into the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, allegedly in response to provocations carried out by South Ossetian paramilitary forces. While advancing into South Ossetia, the Georgian forces encountered Russian peacekeeping forces, and in the fighting that followed the Russians suffered numerous casualties. This fighting triggered a major Russian military response, with tens of thousands of Russian troops, backed by thousands of armored vehicles, pouring into South Ossetia, evicting the Georgian forces, and then moving into Georgia proper, occupying the port city of Poti and threatening the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The Russian navy sortied from its bases in Sevastopol, Ukraine, to implement a naval blockade of the Georgian coast.53
The United States and its NATO allies condemned the Russian assault on Georgia. The fighting took place during the height of the 2008 presidential campaign, and both the Democratic candidate, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, and his Republican opponent, Arizona Senator John McCain, spoke critically of the Russian action. In a move designed to send a signal to Russia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travelled to Poland, where she signed a formal agreement with the Polish government about the basing of missile interceptors on Polish soil. This action prompted a stern rebuke by the Russian military, which warned that Poland was “exposing itself to a strike—100 percent.” Russian military doctrine, General Anatoly Nogovitsin warned, permitted the use of nuclear weapons in such a situation. Exacerbating the situation further, NATO dispatched a small naval task force into the Black Sea for the purpose of delivering humanitarian supplies to Georgia in defiance of the Russian blockade. Both President Bush and NATO expressed their intent to work toward making both Georgia and Ukraine members of NATO in the future.54
In November 2008 Senator Barack Obama won his bid to become president of the United States. He did so in convincing fashion, decisively beating John McCain in both the popular vote and the electoral vote. The situation President Obama inherited from George W. Bush was grim. America was at war on two fronts, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The standoffs with Iran and North Korea concerning their respective nuclear programs remained unresolved. U.S.-Russian relations were at an all-time low, with important discussions concerning the future of the soon-to-be-expired START at a standstill. And while the Bush administration articulated the importance of continued arms reductions, Secretary of Defense Gates still pushed Congress for a revitalization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and argued the need for a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons—the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW. Failure to fund the RRW, Gates warned, could lead to a situation in which the United States would be forced to resume nuclear testing in order to verify the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile.55
In addition to seeking a new generation of nuclear weapons, Gates also released the report of a special panel, headed by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, which addressed the issue of nuclear weapons management. “The presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe remains a pillar of NATO unity,” the report noted. “As long as NATO members rely on U.S. nuclear weapons for deterrence—and as long as they maintain their own dual-capable aircraft as part of that deterrence—no action should be taken to remove them without a thorough and deliberate process of consultation.” The United States maintained a force of some four hundred nuclear bombs in storage facilities located in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.56
The talk of NATO nuclear deterrence, coupled with Russian rhetoric about a potential nuclear response to the U.S. decision to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, was being backed up by a decision to retain U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe while Russia deployed nuclear-capable short-range missiles into the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, nestled between Poland and Lithuania. Far from stabilizing European security, the actions of the United States, combined with the counteractions of the Russians, were putting nuclear forces face-to-face at a time of increased tension. The Russian recognition of the independence of two breakaway Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, only complicated matters further by bringing volatile ethnic tension into the mix of Georgia’s bid for NATO membership.
The Bush administration legacy, from an arms control perspective, was one of arrogance and incompetence, which combined to create incoherence, resulting in the virtual destruction of the framework of disarmament and nonproliferation that was supposed to enhance U.S. and world security in the post–Cold War era. The path of America’s failed arms control policy, stretching from the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945 to the decision to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe in 2008, placed the United States and the post-World War Two liberal order on very dangerous ground, with the presidency of George W. Bush doing more harm to U.S. arms control and nonproliferation policy than the actions of all the administrations that preceded his. The main question confronting the U.S. and the rest of the world was whether or not Barack Obama would be able to right a ship that, by any measurement, was clearly sinking.
ENDNOTES
1 Alexander Moens, The Foreign Policy of George W. Bush: Values, Strategy, and Loyalty (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 87–88.
2 Scott Ritter, Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America (New York: Context Books, 2003), 75.
3 “ABM Treaty Withdrawal Neither Necessary Nor Prudent,” Arms Control Association Press Conference, December 13, 2001.
4 Wade Boese, “Bush Pushes New Strategic Framework, Missile Defenses,” Arms Control Today, June 2001.
5 Stephen J. Hadley, “A Call to Deploy,” Washington Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2000): 95–108.
6 George W. Bush, Press Conference with Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Warsaw, Poland, June 15, 2001.
7 Vladimir Putin, Press Conference, July 18, 2001.
8 Nikolai Sokov, U.S. Withdrawal from ABM Treaty: Post-Mortem and Possible Consequences, Center for Non-Proliferation Studies Report, December 14, 2001.
9 Malcolm R. Dando, Preventing Biological Warfare: The Failure of American Leadership (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 166–167.
10 Ibid., 168–169.
11 Patrick Hayden, Tom Lansford, and Robert P. Watson, eds., America’s War on Terror (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 60.
12 Chris Dolan, In War We Trust: The Bush Doctrine and the Pursuit of Just War (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 5.
13 Joseph Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order: Looking East, Looking West? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 148.
14 J. Peter Scoblic, U.S. Versus Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security (New York: Viking, 2008), 175.
15 Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 126.
16 Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), 419.
17 Norman Polmar, The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 62.
18 Nick Ritchie, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy after the Cold War: Russians, “Rogues,” and Domestic Division (New York: Routledge, 2008), 118.
19 Amy F. Woolf, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure (New York: Novinka, 2005), 33.
20 Black, 207.
21 Tom Sauer, Nuclear Inertia: U.S. Weapons Policy after the Cold War (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 28.
22 “Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reduction: The Moscow Treaty,” Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, July 9, 17, 23, and September 12, 2002, vols. 107–622, 252.
23 Sarah Diehl and James Moltz, eds., Nuclear Weapons and Non-Proliferation: A Reference Book (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 158.
24 M. Kent Bolton, U.S. National Security and Foreign Policymaking after 9/11: Present at the Re-Creation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 22.
25 Glen Segell, Disarming Iraq (London: Glen Segell Publishers, 2004), 117.
26 Russ Hoyle, Going to War: How Misinformation, Disinformation, and Arrogance Led America into Iraq (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008), 308.
27 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (Unclassified Version), NSPD-17/HSPD-17 (Department of Homeland Security), December 2002.
28 Ibid.
29 Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the “War on Terror” (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 95.
30 Ibid., 96.
31 Stephen J. Cimbala, Nuclear Weapons and Cooperative Security in the 21st Century: The New Disorder (New York: Routledge, 2009), 68.
32 Peter Truscott, Putin’s Progress: A Biography of Russia’s Enigmatic President, Vladimir Putin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 293.
33 Joint Statement by President George W. Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin on the New Strategic Relationship, St. Petersburg, Russia, June 1, 2003.
34 Hans Kristensen, “The Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons: New Doctrine Falls Short of Bush Pledge,” Arms Control Today (September 2005).
35 Ritchie, 66.
36 Scoblic, 181.
37 John Francis Murphy, The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 223.
38 William J. Perry, Charles D. Ferguson, and Brent Scowcroft, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), 78.
39 Los Alamos Study Group, “The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Can’t Meet Congressional Objections,” Abbreviated Talking Points, April 16, 2004.
40 Scott Ritter, Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change (New York: Nation Books, 2006), 113.
41 Ibid., 132.
42 Patrick Cronin, Double Trouble: Iran and North Korea as Challenges to International Security (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008), 129.
43 Gardner, 118.
44 Diehl and Moltz, 64.
45 Ibid., 89.
46 Stephen Blank, “Towards a New Russian Policy,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, February 2008.
47 Foreign Affairs Committee, House of Commons, “Global Security: Russia, Second Report of Session 2007–2008, Report,” Parliament of Great Britain, 2007, 102.
48 Richard Ragaini, ed., International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies, 38th Session (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2008), 212.
49 Richard Weitz, China-Russia Security Relations: Strategic Parallelism Without Partnership or Passion? (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2008), 44.
50 Foreign Affairs Committee, 102.
51 G. P. Geoghegan, Republicanism: The Dark Night of the American Dream (Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 2008), 25.
52 Foreign Affairs Committee, 58.
53 Jeffrey Mankoff, Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 294.
54 Jim Heintz, “Russia Warns Poland on U.S. Missile Base,” Boston Globe, August 16, 2008.
55 Mark Thompson, “Obama’s Showdown over Nukes,” Time, January 26, 2009.
56 Walter Pincus, “Panel Urges Keeping U.S. Nuclear Arms in Europe,” Washington Post, January 9, 2009.