DISARMAMENT: THE PERENNIAL FOLLY
Exclusive: Disarmament: The Perennial Folly
William R. Hawkins
Speaking at a joint press conference with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. and Russia had made “considerable progress†towards agreement on a new strategic arms treaty. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expires in December and negotiators have been working on a successor document. When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the Nobel Committee stated, “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.†In his statement accepting the prize, Obama said, “We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that’s why we’ve begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weaponsâ€
In his speech to the UN General assembly September 23rd, Obama talked about how he intends to lead the world in the direction of disarmament by example. “The basic bargain that shapes the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,†he stated is, “nations with nuclear weapons have a responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them.†He then declared, “America intends to keep our end of the bargain.â€
We will pursue a new agreement with Russia to substantially reduce our strategic warheads and launchers. We will move forward with ratification of the Test Ban Treaty, and work with others to bring the treaty into force so that nuclear testing is permanently prohibited. We will complete a Nuclear Posture Review that opens the door to deeper cuts and reduces the role of nuclear weapons. And we will call upon countries to begin negotiations in January on a treaty to end the production of fissile material for weapons.
As a liberal ideologue, Obama’s pursuit of disarmament is a product of naïveté and wishful thinking. A core difference between conservatives and liberals is that while conservatives try to learn from history, liberals try to escape from history. For statesmen of a realistic bent, the mantra of “disarmament†has long been known as a diplomatic tactic to gain an advantage (or avoid a disadvantage) in military contests. That the Obama administration has engaged Russia first on arms reduction takes students of history back 110 years to the first world disarmament conference, which was the product of a Russian initiative.
On September 3, 1898, Russian Foreign Minister Count Mikhail Muraviev called for a meeting of all the major powers to exchange “ideas in furtherance of national economy and international peace in the interests of humanity.†The objective was “to put an end to the constantly increasing development of armaments.†Behind this flowery rhetoric, Tsar Nicholas II had a more practical aim. Russia had just completed a buildup of forces in Asia and had recently reequipped its army with a new rifle. The arms race in Europe was heating up, and Russia did not have the economic strength to compete. Germany had just developed a new field gun with a much higher rate of fire than Russian artillery, and it was feared that it would be provided to Russia’s arch rival in the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Tsar needed a “freeze†on armaments to keep from falling behind more advanced rivals.
The Russian Minister of War had initially suggested to the Tsar that a bilateral agreement be negotiated with the Austrians. Finance Minister Sergei Witte thought that a multilateral conference would allow Russia to disguise its economic weakness behind a cloud of idealism. The other major powers were not fooled, but the strength of public opinion prevented any government from refusing to talk about arms limitation. Twenty-six nations attended what is known as the First Hague Conference, held in the Dutch city that has become a center for the advancement of international law.
There was an active peace movement then similar to what is seen today. It was a diverse coalition of religious pacifists; socialists who rejected nationalism in favor of the universal solidarity of the working class; businessmen seeking a stable world order conducive to commerce; and libertarians opposed to the demands of the national security state. When the conference opened on May 18, 1899, thousands of antiwar activists flocked to it. The U.S. delegation was headed by Andrew Dickson White, the co-founder of Cornell University who was then serving as ambassador to Germany. He noted “the queer letters and crankish proposals which come in every day are amazing.†Also on the U.S. team sent by President William McKinley was Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose The Influence of Sea Power upon History was then and still is a classic work on strategy and policy, whereas what happened at the conference has been lost from public memory.
The First Hague Peace Conference lasted until July 29, 1899. It ended with a ban on “dum dum†expanding bullets used in colonial warfare (the U.S. and England both voted against the ban), and prohibitions on the use of poison gas in naval warfare and on the dropping of bombs from balloons or aircraft. A Second Hague Conference was held in 1907, but a third meeting had to be cancelled. It had been scheduled for 1915, but World War I had broken out in 1914. In that war, the advance in infantry weapons far surpassed the “dum dum†bullet, warplanes came into their own as bombers (though German zeppelins also attacked London), and poison gas was widely used (though not at sea where it proved impractical). What drive armaments are politics and the need to back diplomacy with force to protect vital national interests. A peaceful world would not need weapons, but the actual world of persistent conflict will always require them.
President Obama wants to “reset†relations with Moscow by dropping America back down to Russia’s level. The Russians, despite the surge in oil and natural gas income, is still a much weaker country than the United States. President Ronald Reagan brought on the collapse of the larger Soviet Union by demonstrating that Moscow could not keep up with the more dynamic American system. The Soviet collapse cost the “evil empire†not only control of Eastern Europe but also much of the land that pre-communist Russian had conquered over the centuries. Moscow is weaker today than when the Berlin Wall fell.
According to Stephen Blank, a Russian expert at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, “U.S. policy presents Russia with enormous, if not insuperable, challenges because America simply refuses to stay deterred…Russia evidently finds it increasingly difficult to deter the United States across both the conventional and nuclear spectrums. The dominant motif of U.S. defense policy, to some extent under President Clinton, but strongly articulated in the Bush administration is the refusal of the United States to accept any kind of deterrence on its capabilities for global strike.†What the Russians want out of a new START agreement is a reduction in American capabilities to a level that will allow Russia to compete on an equal basis as it did before Reagan.
Moscow is negotiating from a position of weakness, but Obama is willing to accommodate it because he feels embarrassed by American strength. Obama’s policy is to make Soviet retreads like Prime Minister Vladimir Putin feel secure. It should be noted that while Secretary Clinton was in Moscow, Putin was in Beijing signing a host of new agreements with the People’s Republic of China, a country who’s nuclear and missile capabilities are expanding.
As a sign of good faith, Obama canceled the plans of the Bush administration to place a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia has strenuously objected to this deployment, even though it was meant to protect Europe from Iranian missiles. The scale of the missile defenses posed no threat to Russia, but the presence of U.S. bases in Eastern Europe would serve to keep those countries free of Russian pressure and eventual reincorporation into a Russian sphere of influence.
Moving missile defenses offshore to naval ships, as Obama claims he wants to do, severs this tangible link between the U.S., Poland and the Czech Republic, throwing into question whether American help can be counted upon. The respected Czech newspaper, Hospodarske Novine, said in an editorial, “An ally we rely on has betrayed us, and exchanged us for its own, better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid.” Obama’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe in the name of arms control is a major diplomatic gain for those in Russia who dream of returning to the old days of empire.
The Obama administration said it expected nothing in return from Moscow in exchange for canceling its European defense plans. And it has gotten nothing. Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said at the time “”Washington has simply corrected its own mistake.†Rogozin was the leader of the hard line Rodina (Homeland) party before his diplomatic appointment by Putin.
In Moscow, Secretary Clinton was told again that Russia opposes sanctions on Iran over its nuclear weapons program, even after the revelation of a new fortified uranium enrichment site at Qom. Clinton did not seem bothered by this because President Obama also opposes new sanctions. Clinton said no requests for Russian pressure on Tehran had been made. “We did not ask for anything today. We reviewed the situation and where it stood, which I think was the appropriate timing for what this process entails,†she told reporters. Minister Lavrov said “all efforts” should be made to maintain a “dialogue†with Iran, as opposed to taking any action. “We are convinced that threats, sanctions, and threats of pressure in the present situation are counter-productive,†he said. And by counter productive he meant in terms of Russia’s objective to help Iran become a more capable enemy of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
On the eve of the 1907 Hague conference, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote the U.S. ambassador in London warning it would be “idiotic folly…if the free people that have free governments put themselves at the hopeless disadvantage compared with the military despotisms.†This is still very sound advice, but no one in the White House is interested in learning anything from history.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor and Republican Congressional staff member.
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