Bush, Kerry Square Off on Arms Control

The vivid memory of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the steadily increasing number of U.S. casualties in Iraq ensure that national security issues will remain prevalent throughout the homestretch of the 2004 presidential campaign.

President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, exchange barbs daily about who is better fit to serve as commander in chief and would make America safer.

To date, the campaign has not led to an in-depth discussion about how each candidate proposes to address the security challenges posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Based on what little the candidates have said, it is clear that Bush and Kerry do agree on a few things. Both consider the greatest challenge to U.S. security to be preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; and, taking their public statements at face value, the two rivals underscore the need to secure and eliminate nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and shut down the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

Still, even though they share some goals, they frequently disagree in tone and on strategy. Bush proudly touts his readiness to go it alone or patch together coalitions of the willing to counter potential threats. Although not disavowing unilateral action, Kerry speaks consistently of rallying international support and marshalling formal alliances to pursue a more peaceful world. The president prefers handshake agreements. The senator stresses the value of legally binding accords.

When Americans head to the polls Nov. 2, they will have a choice between two candidates who have staked out clear and often divergent approaches to dealing with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Preventing Nuclear Terrorism

Bush’s answer to nuclear terrorism is to capture and kill terrorists and confront, eliminate, or isolate regimes that might supply them with nuclear weapons. The president repeatedly speaks of “taking the fight to the enemy” and stamping out threats before they do damage. Prior to the Iraq war, Bush invoked the specter of Saddam Hussein opening up his suspected stockpiles of terrible weapons to terrorists.

To deter individuals, companies, and governments worldwide from doing business with terrorists, the Bush administration proposed and won adoption in April of a UN Security Council resolution requiring all countries to adopt and enforce laws designed to prevent nonstate actors from getting weapons of mass destruction. It also has encouraged other countries to intercept suspected shipments of weapons at sea, on land, and in the air as part of its May 2003 Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which now counts 14 other countries as active participants.

Kerry’s mantra is “No material. No bomb. No nuclear terrorism.” In accordance with this theme, he prioritizes stepping up U.S. and international efforts to staunch production of new materials that could be used to build nuclear weapons, as well as to get rid of or take out of circulation as much of the existing ingredients as possible (see Nuclear Materials and Technologies Control and Threat Reduction sections below).

Kerry further asserts he will appoint a presidential coordinator to manage all U.S. resources and activities devoted to denying terrorists the weapons they seek. He has also outlined a new program to enable foreign scientists to seek refuge in the United States if they expose illicit weapons activities.

Nuclear Materials and Technologies Control

In a Feb. 11 speech, Bush said nuclear supplier nations should refuse to sell nuclear items to countries that do not grant international arms inspectors broader authority to carry out investigative work inside their borders. To achieve this, Bush is pressing all countries to approve an additional protocol to supplement their safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Safeguards, such as inspections and monitoring mechanisms, are designed to provide reassurance that a country is not covertly pursuing nuclear weapons. The president also urged that reprocessing and enrichment technologies not be shipped to countries currently lacking operational plants for such activities, which have both civilian fuel and military bomb applications.

Most recently, the Bush administration announced support for negotiating a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) to forbid the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons (see page 44). A nuclear bomb requires one or the other. The administration is seeking a treaty without verification measures because it does not think the agreement can be “effectively verifiable.”

Kerry favors negotiating a verifiable FMCT. As a first step toward that goal, he would encourage all UN Security Council members to forswear making fissile material for weapons.

The Massachusetts senator also opposes the spread of reprocessing and enrichment facilities to countries without them and would push for creation of a consortium of states to supply nuclear fuel to countries in order to take away any energy or economic rationale for building such facilities. Adoption of an additional protocol by every country should be mandatory, according to Kerry.

To ensure that there are no weak links that terrorists could exploit, Kerry advocates establishing global storage and handling standards for nuclear materials. He also pledges to work toward making trade in WMD technologies an international crime on par with the prohibition against slavery.

Threat Reduction

In June 2002, the Bush administration committed to provide $10 billion over 10 years to secure nuclear materials and weapons scattered across the former Soviet Union. Bush called on other states to match the U.S. commitment, and so far, they have pledged roughly $7 billion. Threat reduction activities have been extended outside the former Soviet Union to Iraq and Libya, which publicly renounced its nuclear and chemical weapons program in December 2003. (See ACT, January/February 2004.)

In addition, the administration moved this May to speed up programs to retrieve U.S.- and Russian-supplied nuclear fuel, which could also be used to make bombs, from third-country recipients. The aim is to return all Russian-exported fuel to Moscow by 2010 and all U.S. fuel to the United States within a decade. In conjunction with these recovery programs, the United States is looking to convert some 30 foreign research reactors within the next five years into reactors running on alternative fuel. This would leave approximately 30 other reactors worldwide still operating on fuel that could be used to manufacture atomic arms.

Kerry is promising to secure all nuclear materials and fuel, including that being used in foreign research reactors, within four years. To hasten this work, Kerry says he will boost funding above current levels (without specifying exactly how much) and personally engage Russian President Vladimir Putin to overcome obstacles hindering progress in Russia.

North Korea

The Bush administration wants Pyongyang to “completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle” its nuclear programs. Bush refuses to negotiate directly with North Korea, opting instead to conduct talks through the six-party process that also involves China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. At the latest round of these talks in June, the Bush administration offered for the first time a proposal holding out the possibility of resumed energy aid by other countries, a multilateral security agreement, and direct talks on the lifting of U.S. sanctions in return for North Korea scrapping its nuclear programs. Bush repeatedly voices confidence that the North Korean crisis can be resolved diplomatically.

Kerry labels ending North Korea’s weapons programs as a “top priority.” He argues that no option, including bilateral talks or military force, should be ruled out to achieve the “irreversible elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.”

Iran

The Bush administration has allowed France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to take the lead in negotiating directly with Iran, while pressing IAEA members to strongly condemn Iran for its clandestine nuclear activities and refer the matter to the UN Security Council. There, the Bush administration hopes to increase international pressure, including the possibility of sanctions, on oil- and natural gas-rich Tehran to shelve its nuclear programs, which the United States believes are for military purposes.

Kerry contends the United States should “get off the sidelines” and recommends that the United States join other countries in offering Iran access to fuel for nuclear energy purposes. If Tehran rejects the proposal, Kerry says its true intentions will be revealed. The aim, according to Kerry, is to get Iran to verifiably and permanently suspend its activities that could be used to develop the materials needed for nuclear arms. If these efforts are stymied, the senator advocates dragging Iran before the Security Council.

Missile Defense

During his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush repeatedly called for deployment of ballistic missile defenses to protect against rogue states and terrorists. After withdrawing the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty two years ago and allocating more than $32 billion over four years to developing missile defenses, Bush stands on the verge of declaring the initial elements of a ground-based, long-range missile interceptor system ready for action despite the lack of tests to prove it. Future plans include expanding the ground-based system, possibly including to Europe; adding sea- and air-based defenses; and exploring space-based weapons.

Kerry supports investing in missile defenses but alleges the administration is overspending on an unproven system to deal with one of the less likely methods terrorists might use to strike the United States. Earlier this year, Kerry voted to transfer $515 million in missile defense funding to nonproliferation and antiterrorism activities, although this proposal was defeated.

U.S. Nuclear Forces

Soon after taking office, Bush vowed to cut U.S. nuclear forces to the “lowest-possible number…consistent with our national security needs.” The administration unveiled in June a plan to cut by almost half the entire U.S. nuclear force, which currently numbers more than 10,000 warheads, by the end of 2012. At the same time, the administration is studying possible modifications to existing U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy underground targets better. It also won a repeal of a legislative prohibition against researching nuclear weapons with small yields, cut by half the amount of time needed to conduct a nuclear test, and is pushing construction of a facility to churn out new nuclear warhead cores. All of these initiatives are part of creating a “responsive infrastructure,” according to the administration, that would enable the United States to build up or reconfigure its forces to avoid being caught flat-footed by a new or resurgent foe or address technical failures that might emerge in existing warhead designs.

Arguing “we don’t need a world with more usable nuclear weapons,” Kerry says he would abandon current administration research into new and modified types of warheads and accelerate U.S. nuclear reductions.

Russian Nuclear Forces

Bush and Putin signed in May 2002 the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which commits the United States and Russia to reduce their number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to less than 2,200 apiece by the end of 2012. The changing U.S.-Russian relationship obviates the need for any additional nuclear arms control agreements with Russia from the administration’s perspective.

Kerry denounced SORT as a “hollow treaty” and declares he would work to spur its pace of reductions and add provisions to check that each party is in compliance. During the Senate debate on the treaty, lawmakers rejected a proposal by Kerry that would have required an annual intelligence report on Russia’s nuclear reductions. In addition, he promotes reaching agreement with Moscow to destroy excess warheads rather than storing them as currently permitted. Kerry also supports “new arms control measures designed to eliminate each nation’s smaller, more portable, tactical nuclear weapons, thousands of which remain in Russia.”

Nuclear Testing

The Bush administration is adhering to a moratorium on nuclear testing and denies any plans to test. Yet, it also does not rule out the possibility of conducting a test and opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Kerry voted for the CTBT when the Senate rejected it in October 1999. He has not said whether he would resubmit the treaty, which he previously described as a “critical component of broader U.S. strategy on nuclear nonproliferation,” for Senate reconsideration if elected.

Biological Weapons

In 2001 the Bush administration ended more than six years of negotiations to add a verification regime to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans germ weapons, on the basis that it would do little to prevent violations. As an alternative, the Bush administration has significantly boosted U.S. funding to develop new vaccines and increase U.S. preparedness to combat a biological weapons attack.

Reconstituting negotiations on strengthening the BWC is one of Kerry’s proposed responses to biological weapons dangers. He also says he would push the development of better emergency plans, vaccines, and detection technologies and name one person to be in charge of all U.S. government efforts to counter germ weapons.