News Analysis: The Politics of Arms Control in the Second Bush Term

President George W. Bush won re-election last month despite attacks on his arms control and nonproliferation record from his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. So, it is hardly surprising that Bush and his supporters would view his second term as an opportunity to continue as before.

Indeed, lawmakers from both parties say that all signs point to Bush pushing ahead in the same direction. Even though there is no clear popular mandate on arms policy in the returns, the president sees the election as an endorsement of his performance as commander-in-chief. In addition, with a stronger Republican presence on Capitol Hill and a cabinet that more clearly shares his foreign policy views, Bush can expect to face fewer institutional obstacles to his more assertive approach.

Yet, the president may have less latitude than his opponents fear or his supporters believe. Bush may be constrained by the ongoing U.S. involvement in Iraq; the growing U.S. budget deficit; and the need to mend ties with European allies and maintain relatively warm relations with two other major nuclear-weapon states: Russia and China.

These dynamics are likely to be particularly important in domestic U.S. policy debates over how to deal with North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear activities and the safeguarding of unconventional weapons and materials located in the former Soviet Union. They may also play out in votes on developing new nuclear weapons or constructing additional missile defenses.

During his campaign, Bush made clear that he believes the primary threat to U.S. national security lies not so much in the worldwide spread of nuclear and other weapons, but in who has them. “The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network,” Bush said during the first presidential debate.

Unlike Kerry, Bush and his aides see many formal arms control agreements as unenforceable, time-consuming, and a self-defeating restraint on the United States. Instead, they would prefer that states individually enact and enforce laws to deal with proliferation threats and join in ad hoc coalitions to counter them when necessary. They place greater stress on “supply-side” mechanisms aimed at preventing weapons technology from leaking to terrorists or other countries than “demand-side” measures aimed at curbing the appetite for such weapons.

In their debates, Kerry skewered Bush’s emphasis on military rather than diplomatic solutions to nonproliferation issues, most notably the administration’s decision to invade Iraq on the grounds, later proven unfounded, that it possessed chemical, and biological weapons and that, if left unchecked, it would likely soon have nuclear weapons.

Having rebuffed the criticism by winning re-election, Bush is expected to continue giving greater prominence to more muscular counterproliferation tools such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to interdict unconventional weapons en route to “rogue states” or terrorists. Bush’s nominee for secretary of state, his first-term national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherded through a national security strategy calling for greater use of such counterproliferation tools in contrast to traditional arms control approaches.

The new administration is also expected to continue a controversial drive for an expanded nuclear weapons infrastructure that would quickly permit the development of new nuclear weapons if they were viewed as needed to counter a new or resurgent foe or cope with technical problems in the existing arsenal.

Iran and North Korea
With regard to specific countries, major questions remain unanswered, particularly whether Bush will choose to continue his relatively hands-off approach to the nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran, where other countries have often played the lead role. During the campaign, Kerry said Bush had not done enough to slow the progress of Iran’s or North Korea’s nuclear program and called for more direct diplomatic involvement by the United States. Bush sought to parry Kerry’s assaults by saying that he wanted a diplomatic resolution of the crises. Yet, the United States has offered few hints of potential compromises to advance the diplomatic process and has sometimes undermined other countries’ efforts to do so.

Many current and former administration officials and outside experts say that the U.S. policy toward both countries had been deadlocked between those such as departing Secretary of State Colin Powell favoring negotiations and Vice President Dick Cheney favoring a more confrontational approach. Now that the hard-line faction appears to have the upper hand, some supporters are expecting Bush to take a tougher tack with the remaining two members of the “axis of evil.”

“The election was a wake-up call” for North Korea and Iran, said Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “Appeasement is not going to happen.”

Some other lawmakers, however, said the administration may not treat the two countries equally.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House International Relations Committee, said he thought there were opportunities for progress in the six-party talks involving North Korea, especially if China could be convinced to put more pressure on Pyongyang. Lantos said he intended to travel to North Korea in the near future to see if he could advance U.S. efforts.

As for Iran, Lantos, who enjoys a close relationship with Rice, said both he and administration officials are “enormously skeptical” that European efforts to talk Iran out of its uranium-enrichment program will be successful. Lantos has urged administration officials to keep their distance from the European offer. Instead, the lawmaker said that the administration should move to fully implement a 1996 law, reauthorized in 2001, that called for U.S. sanctions on any international firm that conducts more than $40 million in business with Iran. Others including Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, a senior Republican on the International Relations Committee, have called on Bush to use diplomacy to turn Iran away from nuclear weapons.

Recent public opinion polls indicate that the American public shares the president’s views that North Korea’s or Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons tops the list of foreign policy problems that the administration must tackle. Yet, polling also suggests that the public would prefer that Bush place more emphasis on diplomatic options than he has done to date.

In addition, the conflict in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, the continued U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan, is soaking up manpower and attention that might be needed in a military confrontation with North Korea and Iran.

The legacy of the Iraq conflict and the fact that Powell and other U.S. officials trumpeted what turned out to be inaccurate intelligence on Iraq’s unconventional weapons has also harmed U.S. credibility with allies as it attempts to make fresh claims about North Korea’s or Iran’s weapons programs, diplomats say.

With the president scheduling a visit to Europe after his second inaugural, U.S. options may be further limited by Bush’s effort to mend frayed ties with France and Germany. The countries, together with the United Kingdom, make up the troika that has been negotiating with Iran.

Bush also has faced resistance from the two other major nuclear-weapon states, Russia and China, to bringing Iran before the UN Security Council because of Tehran’s violations of its safeguards agreement under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Both countries have strong economic ties with Iran.

Budget Blues
Bush’s ambitions may be restricted as well by the growing and record-breaking U.S. budget deficit and defense budgets. In the recently concluded 2004 fiscal year, defense spending amounted to nearly half a trillion dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It is expected to rise even more next year when an estimated supplemental spending bill to fund the ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan kicks in.

Soaring defense spending helped lead to a budget deficit of nearly half a trillion dollars in the past fiscal year. Moreover, if Bush’s two major domestic initiatives—proposed reforms of tax policy and Social Security—are enacted, they are expected to increase government borrowing further.

The record red ink has already driven some fiscally conservative Republicans, such as Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, to break ranks with Bush. Hobson led a successful effort in late November to zero out funding for some nuclear weapons projects.

That vote will slow some administration plans, particularly research on controversial new nuclear weapons and advanced nuclear test site readiness. To date, the adminstration has said that it plans to hold to a decade-old moratorium on testing. No country has tested nuclear weapons since 1998.

Some congressional aides say that backlash can only be expected to grow, as lawmakers intent on preserving money for operations in Iraq and certain Department of Defense programs look to cut other spending, such as the weapons programs controlled by the Department of Energy.

“They’re going to see huge pressure” on the defense budget not related to the Defense Department, said one congressional aide. “If they’re lucky, they’re going to see the same level of funding they have right now. They might have to see some reductions.”

Longer-term missile defense programs could also feel a pinch, said Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee. Nevertheless, with the administration already deploying elements of a system, Spratt said he did not expect funding to be cut significantly. For one thing, Bush’s new national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is known as a strong missile defense supporter.

“It’s hard to slow down this program. I wouldn’t expect it to be cut by more than a few hundred million dollars,” Spratt said.

On the other hand, some key nonproliferation programs could be hampered by the budget limitations, according to lawmakers. During the presidential campaign, Kerry and his aides talked about ramping up spending on programs to secure nuclear materials and weapons scattered over the former Soviet Union. Bush said that he too supported boosting such spending and claimed that it had increased by one-third during his tenure. Yet, most of the increase Bush touted had come from spending in the United States on the disposal of U.S. materials and weapons. Spending during his administration on these threat reduction activities has hovered pretty consistently around $1 billion per year.

By contrast, Kerry and his aides suggested they would spend considerably more. Although they never provided an exact estimate, they suggested that they would spend enough to remove all nuclear bomb-making material from inadequately guarded sites within four years, as opposed to the 13 years Kerry estimated it would take under Bush’s plans.

Spratt and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a senior member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that, despite Bush’s rhetoric, they did not foresee the administration seeking increased funding for the threat reduction programs in the coming year. They noted that the administration had not sought new funding for a widely publicized initiative launched by the Energy Department in May to retrieve U.S.- and Russian-supplied nuclear fuel, which could also be used to make nuclear bombs, from third-country recipients.

“I don’t think they’ve devoted sufficient attention and resources to this huge challenge,” said Reed. “Their words are encouraging but the money is not there.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) would likely oppose any effort to significantly increase funding for the program. He has long been critical of the threat reduction spending, arguing that such funds would be better spent on defense spending. (See ACT, April 2003)

Hunter also is likely to oppose efforts by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who initiated many of the threat reduction programs with former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), to lift many of the legal restrictions Congress has imposed on such funding. Legislation that Lugar plans to reintroduce next year would eliminate six broad conditions Congress imposed when the program was first initiated in 1991, as well as six separate conditions governing chemical weapons elimination assistance (see box).

Lugar’s measure would also eliminate a $50 million cap on the amount of funds that could be spent on such projects outside the former Soviet Union. The administration recently announced the first such funding, for chemical weapons demilitarization in Albania.

Spratt said that, in a recent discussion with Russian counterparts, U.S. officials and lawmakers supported the view that it was time for a broad overhaul of the Nunn-Lugar programs.

“Rather than incrementally change legislation, I think we need new legislation, new blood,” Spratt said.