In 2009, months after his inauguration, President Barack Obama gave a memorable — albeit quixotic — speech in Prague. He promised “concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.”
In accordance with the importance he placed on this goal, he hosted the first-ever biennial Nuclear Security Summit the following year in Washington D.C. Last week, he attended his fourth and last such summit. In the interim, nuclear security has suffered significant blows, leaving Obama’s legacy on one of his key initiatives in quite poor condition.
Since 2009, North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, the most recent of which is claimed to be a hydrogen bomb, according to The New York Times. In fact, North Korea had launched a potential delivery vehicle just hours before Obama’s 2009 speech in Prague.
It’s unconfirmed, though possible, that North Korea has also aided Bashar al-Assad in developing nuclear technology. Even the small supply of uranium in Syria — presently among the world’s most unstable regions — could aid terrorists in creating a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, combines nuclear material with conventional explosives in order to radioactively contaminate the site of an explosion.
Meanwhile, rapid expansion of Pakistan’s arsenal has put it on pace to be the third most powerful nuclear force within a decade, according to The Washington Post. This is concerning, considering the fact that Pakistan has refused to match the no-first-use pledge of its rival, India.
Additionally, despite the Obama administration’s New START Treaty with Russia, which commits both nations to reduce stockpiles below 1950s levels by 2018, tensions with Russia make the nuclear threat more viable than it has been in two decades. Given the Cold War-like tensions that have reemerged in the past several years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Theodore Postol called today’s nuclear situation “far more dangerous” in an opinion piece published by The Boston Globe.
Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created a Doomsday Clock in 1947 to the measure the nuclear threat, dropped the clock to three minutes to midnight. For reference, the clock has not been dropped so low since 1983 and was at a similar same level in 1953, just three years after the Soviet test of a nuclear weapon set the arms race in motion, according to the Bulletin’s website.
Lawrence Krauss, chair of the organization’s Board of Sponsors and a professor at Arizona State University is quoted on the website as saying, “Developments have been mixed since we moved the clock forward a year ago. In spite of some positive news, the major challenges the Bulletin laid out for governments then have not been addressed, even as the overall global challenges we need to face become more urgent.”
The positive news referred to above is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal, which didn’t cause the clock to relent. Obama would nonetheless point to this deal as evidence of his success, yet his administration has taken actions that aggravate the nuclear security situation.
While the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty requires both the United States and Russia to reduce stockpiles, according to the U.S. Department of State’s official blog, both nations have embarked on major programs of “modernization” in place of stockpile expansion.
Obama himself approved a $1 trillion plan to update the U.S. arsenal, according to The New York Times. This includes the creation of smaller but more targeted nuclear weapons, something weapons experts claim would make the use of nuclear weapons much more tempting. If this were an accurate assessment, a future president could defy a 70-plus-year precedent not to use nuclear weapons and open the floodgates to further usage by other nations.
Furthermore, in Prague, Obama said, “It is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned,” citing ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as his goal. Unsurprisingly, he has failed to secure Congress’s cooperation in this matter.
This brings us to this year’s summit, which, as a result of a boycott by Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the event mostly a series of symbolic agreements among nations already committed to common goals, according to The Guardian. The United States and Russia together control 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. When one is absent, other countries feel no pressure to take significant action.
While these four summits may have opened constructive dialogues and focused international attention on the potential smuggling of nuclear material, they have largely focused on civilian-controlled uranium, which comprises only 2 to 3 percent of the world’s uranium. Governments control the rest and stockpiles are kept secret.
The one bright spot in the summit was an agreement between the United States and Japan — which has one of the largest uranium stockpiles in the world — to make one of the largest international shipments of uranium ever out of Japan in order to keep it safe from terrorists. This is a great sign that Japan remains firmly committed to being free of nuclear weapons, one week following presidential candidate Donald Trump’s suggestion that he would consider allowing them to acquire a weapon, CBS News reported.
It will be the responsibility of the next president to address government stockpiles and pressure other nations to release figures of highly enriched uranium, just as the Obama administration has. Furthermore, the next president must remain committed to non-proliferation, containing or degrading North Korea’s capabilities, increasing the rapidity with which the United States and Russia reduce stockpiles and keeping nuclear material out of terrorists’ hands.
