A Nuclear Legacy Within Reach

 

President Obama speaking at the Pentagon on Thursday.

The Air Force has formally begun the process of asking defense contractors to submit proposals for a new long-range cruise missile and a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile. These two weapons, capable of carrying nuclear payloads, will cost billions of dollars. The first is unnecessary; the second, debatable.

The invitations are ostensibly aimed at modernizing the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The weapons’ dubious value aside, the requests also seem to contradict President Obama’s 2009 promise to change American nuclear policy in ways that would make the nation safer by reducing threats from the world’s most lethal weapons.

Mr. Obama, who knows he is running out of time to make good on that pledge, recently made one positive decision — to pursue a United Nations Security Council resolution that calls on all nations to refrain from nuclear testing and to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The resolution is an attempt to compensate for the Senate’s refusal to ratify the treaty, even though it was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. The United States, along with every other country with nuclear weapons except North Korea, has voluntarily observed a testing moratorium for years, and the administration wants to make sure it remains in effect.

There are other legacy-building moves Mr. Obama can take before he leaves office, not least rolling back the Pentagon’s outsize plans to modernize the entire nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, including aircraft, submarines and warheads, at an estimated $1 trillion. The cruise missile and the intercontinental ballistic missile are just a part of those plans. Under current budget caps, spending all that money on nuclear capability will leave little for conventional weapons.

The new cruise missile, faster and with a greater range than the existing version, should be canceled. In a letter to Mr. Obama last month, 10 Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, called the weapon “an unnecessary capability that could increase the risk of nuclear war.” And some defense experts, like former Defense Secretary William Perry, have argued that the land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are no longer needed. In other words, the time has come to think seriously about whether that leg of the traditional air-sea-land nuclear triad should be gradually retired.

If Mr. Obama is unwilling to cancel either of these programs, he should at least give his successor the political space to rethink such investments by appointing a commission to examine the full range of the Pentagon’s modernization plans. Another useful step would be to reduce the stockpile of 2,500 or so nuclear warheads held in reserve. Mr. Obama could also declare that the United States would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. In 2010, he said the United States would not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapons country. A blanket no-first-use policy would put a further check on future presidents.

The Pentagon and some Republicans are resisting many of these ideas. But Mr. Obama still has the responsibility and, if he moves swiftly, the time to advance his vision of a safer world.