Steve Andreasen: A nuclear arms policy for the 21st century

In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, the suggestion that a supposedly trigger-happy Barry Goldwater might as president order the use of nuclear weapons (remember the famous "Daisy ad") helped send Lyndon Johnson to a landslide victory in 1964. Today, the issue of whether and when a president might use nuclear weapons has made a surprising comeback in the context of the 2008 campaign.

The discussion began at the June 5 Republican debate, where front-runners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani implied that they would consider a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. On Aug. 2, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, responding to a question over the possible use of nuclear weapons against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said, "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance." He went on: "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Reacting to Obama's remarks, Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton said, "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons. I don't believe any president should make blanket statements with regard to use or nonuse." And during the Aug. 19 Democratic debate, former Sen. John Edwards said, "I do not want to limit my options, and I don't want to talk about hypothetical use of nuclear weapons," prompting New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to declare, "I wouldn't, as an American president, use nuclear weapons first."

Clinton is on well-trod ground: Historically, America has maintained a policy of "strategic ambiguity," refusing to rule out a nuclear first strike. Richardson's statement aside, the early salvos in the 2008 campaign suggest that by next summer, there will be little divergence from this norm. The rhetoric of the Republican candidates will likely run closer to "not taking any option off the table" rather than proposing a preemptive nuclear strike. And Obama -- who appeared at first to be questioning the nuclear status quo -- quickly clarified his remarks.

But this is one instance where the seemingly safest political course may be far divorced from today's reality and counterproductive to America's long-term security interest in reversing reliance on nuclear weapons around the globe.

Today, it is hard to define a credible scenario for the first use of American nuclear arms. To begin, there is no longer a Soviet Union that threatens vital strategic interests and requires the threat of nuclear first use to deter. Moreover, other nations -- in particular, China, North Korea and Iran -- understand that a conventional challenge to core U.S. interests in Asia or the Middle East would inevitably run up against America's overwhelming superiority on the conventional battlefield. Even with American forces tied down in Iraq, U.S. conventional assets appear both durable and sufficient to deter and, if necessary, defeat any state or combination of states.

It is also hard to see how the threat of nuclear first use would play any discernible role in deterring a committed terrorist. Al-Qaida may perversely welcome a U.S. nuclear strike, assuming it would inflame passions against the United States. Indeed, there may be no better catalyst to a radicalized Pakistan armed with nuclear weapons than for the U.S. to launch such a strike in the region.

No matter the scenario, the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States in the 21st century would inevitably lower the global nuclear threshold -- which undermines U.S. security to a greater degree than any other nation's. A nuclear explosion in New York, London or Tokyo would trigger casualties at least on par with the deadly Asian tsunami of 2004. It would severely cripple the global economic system upon which America relies. And it would challenge civil liberties and freedoms in ways that would affect every American citizen and our society collectively. Finally, the possibility of nuclear arms in the hands of more nations in volatile regions of the globe raises the possibility of another costly preemptive U.S. military strike or competition with a nuclear-armed adversary.

For these reasons, America's national interest would be best served by advancing the proposition that nuclear weapons are legitimate in only one role: preventing their use. For this policy to be credible, the United States would have to lead the way in revising its policy and state publicly that it retains nuclear weapons only for the purpose of deterring aggression involving these weapons.

Explaining the merits of such a policy shift during a presidential campaign constrained by sound bites and counterattacks may be too difficult. Then again, a candidate who can articulate a new policy designed to make the use of any nuclear weapon even more remote might hit a welcome note with the American people. As LBJ said as the little girl in the Daisy ad disappeared behind a mushroom cloud: "These are the stakes -- to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark."

Steve Andreasen, the director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council from 1993 to 2001, teaches at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.