When President Obama meets his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev next month, high on their agenda will be a further reduction in each country’s nuclear arsenal. Both leaders want a bigger reduction than that agreed in the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Under that deal, by 2012 the then total of 3,909 warheads for Russia and 5,576 for the United States was due to be more than halved. Given that these horrific weapons could destroy the world many times over, it seems that sanity is returning to the business of nuclear deterrence.
A sticking point is bound to be the European-based missile shield that is surely not designed as President George W. Bush alleged to shield the EU states from missile attacks from Iran or North Korea, but rather aimed at shooting down Russian missiles. There are two ways Obama can handle this. He can ditch the scheme outright or, if there is a scintilla of truth in the interdiction of nuclear attack from anywhere other than Russia, offer to include Russia in the shield, by sharing some, if not all the technology. Some in Washington will be leery of such cooperation, given Moscow’s growing willingness to threaten its European oil and gas customers with supply cuts, if it does not get its way over issues with third countries, such as the Ukraine.
A possible third alternative would be to delay the implementation of the missile shield, in the hope that Russia would broaden its cooperative approach on other strategic issues. That Medvedev has spoken of the warhead issue so soon after the BRIC summit suggests he may have spoken to the Indians and Chinese about their potential involvement in a wider scheme of nuclear disarmament.
If a far-reaching new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is agreed between the two leading nuclear powers and they press ahead with further deep cuts in their stockpiles, at some point the other declared nuclear states will have to become involved in the process. More important, undeclared nuclear powers, the prime example being Israel, will have to be convinced they must join too.
But the toughest issue will be figuring out how other countries that are still wondering if a nuclear capability will win them greater leverage on the international stage can be dissuaded from trying to produce their own deterrent and use it as effectively as has North Korea until now.
In one way the whole concept of deterrence between the old communist and Western blocs has become empty. It worked but the circumstances in which it worked no longer obtain. What can replace deterrence when nuclear powers are aiming in theory and definitely in the long run for the complete elimination of the nuclear threat? Bilateral deals like that being brokered between Moscow and Washington can only go so far. Multilateral deals in which states commit to shunning the nuclear option and receive some benefit in return have to be the solution. But first of all, existing nuclear states have to set an example.
Iran: Regime against change
The Guardian yesterday commented on the developments in Iran saying in part:
Once a regime loses the combination of legitimacy, popular support, and ability to maintain order without excessive use of force which all successful states display, it is enormously difficult to regain it. That was the lesson the Shah learned 30 years ago as his power melted away. The crisis of the Islamic Republic of Iran today is not of this order, and yet, if at the end of a longer road than the one which the Shah traveled down so rapidly, the same fate may ultimately beckon for the clerical elite who preside over its affairs.
If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had wished to show that the state could be responsive, he would have avoided the harsh language he used at the Friday prayer meeting at Tehran University. He would have said, or at least hinted, that the election results could be reconsidered. He is not the only member of the regime whose authority is damaged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sat in the front row on Friday like a teacher who cannot control his class undergoing the indignity of the headmaster having to emerge from his sanctum to back him up. Whatever else he is, Ahmadinejad is not the president of all Iranians which Khamenei proclaimed him to be last Saturday. He is a compromised and weakened man. But the status of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei in a way matters less than that of Mir Hossein Mousavi. He and his backers now face a test of nerve and purpose.
Will they give in to Khamenei’s argument that all the presidential contenders are “part of the state,” with its implication that they must now retreat from confrontation? Or will Mousavi, in particular, persist in his demand that the election be annulled, refuse to be cowed or coopted, and refuse to ask his supporters to cease protesting? No doubt, if he takes the easier course, there would as a reward be some redressing afterward of the balance between factions inside the regime. But those who voted for Mousavi did not do so to achieve a mere shifting of the furniture of that kind. They wanted deeper changes.
