总统候选人需要看到超越弹头数字

汉斯·克里斯汀森（Hans M. Kristensen）和伊万·奥尔里希（Ivan Oelrich）

巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)提出了一个令人鼓舞的核security policythat promises to reinstate nuclear disarmament as a central goal of U.S. national security and foreign policy. This vision has been shared by all presidents since the Cuban Missile Crisis, except for George W. Bush.

If he is elected the next president, Obama’s policy would be a refreshing break with the gung-ho and divisive policies that have characterized the current administration.

即便如此，重要的是要考虑奥巴马政策的意图，并展望如何实施甚至改进。

The Role of Nuclear Weapons

涉及现有核武器（相对于增殖）的政策部分非常集中在数字上。当美国和俄罗斯的核武器都远远超过任何一个可以想象的核武器时，忽略细节并大量削减数量就很容易。但是，为了使这一过程令人信服地降低核武器的显着性，并最终朝着废除核武器，因此有必要对核武器在美国国家安全政策中应扮演的角色有何作用。除了一些非常普遍的声明之外，总统传统上将此事留给国防部长和国家安全委员会。由于政策和军事计划者将模糊的总统指导转变为过度和危险的核姿势，这种做法在过去陷入了很多麻烦。

其他than a pledge to negotiate with Russia about ending high alert of nuclear weapons, there is nothing in Obama’s policy that suggests the role of nuclear weapons would be any different under him than under Bush or Clinton. Clearly, this is a shortcoming of his proposal. Statements from Senator McCain are even more worrying:he has said他将要求军方进行审查，并报告所需的最低数量，这很清楚地表明，军方而不是总统将就核武器应具有什么作用做出重要决定。

The (first) Bush and Clinton administrations significantly更改美国核武器阻止和摧毁苏联，中国核和大规模的常规力量的作用，阻止了所有具有这种能力的对抗国家的使用和获取各种形式的大规模杀伤性武器。此外，为了回应9/11，布什政府急于向前迈进preemption doctrinethat included nuclear strikes.

To change the role of nuclear weapons requires direct, sustained intervention by the next president. Therefore, both Senators Obama and McCain need to think hard about what his guidance would be on such issues as:

*Should the United States abandon its current policy of deterring all forms of weapons of mass destruction and only use nuclear weapons to deter use of核weapons?

*美国是否应该采用无用的政策，还是仍然有必要保留首先罢工的选择？

*Should the United States retain counterforce targeting, return to countervalue targeting, or develop another concept for what facilities to target with nuclear weapons?

*美国应该大大降低和change the damage expectancy required for nuclear strikes?

*Should the United States abandon its policy of being capable of holding all potential targets at risk or is a more limited range sufficient today?

*美国是否应该停止在操作上部署核武器的做法 - 包括每天在完全可执行的计划下运行 - 还是可以通过较少的操作姿势来保留足够的威慑？

*美国是否应该完成1991 - 1992年的减少并从欧洲撤回其余的战术核武器，而依靠远程武器来向我们的北约盟友提供核雨伞？

否至不使用

Defense Secretary William Cohen of the Clinton administration rejected a no-first-use policy. Will an Obama administration be any different?

If the next president doesn’t address such fundamental policy issues in his first guidance, the outcome of the next Nuclear Posture Review will almost certainly be little more than status quo at lower levels, leaving in place a posture of excessive nuclear capabilities that the United States doesn’t need but which locks it into a warfighting deterrence posture that works against a vision for deep cuts and disarmament.

The End Goal

The component of Obama’s policy that deals with deep nuclear cuts and disarmament comes with important caveats. One is a pledge to “maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist,” a position the Bush administration also shares, but which presents a particular conundrum for a policy that seeks nuclear disarmament: if all nuclear weapon states insist on having nuclear weapons as long as nuclear weapons exist, how can we ever get to zero? That would leave U.S. nuclear policy (and nuclear disarmament) hostage to any country that had just one nuclear weapons, even if our conventional capabilities are more than sufficient to deter anyone who can be deterred (Iran and North Korea being obvious examples).

At some point in the process, some of the nuclear weapon states – eventually all – have to be prepared to relinquish the weapons. This is not unheard of; Belarus, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine have already gone to zero. A “disarmament-president” has to think this conundrum carefully through.

深入削减，肯定是全球消除核武器可能需要批发修改军队在世界上扮演的角色。美国的国家安全 - 以及许多其他大型军事大国 - 根深蒂固地源于旨在威胁其他国家的军事姿势，如果他们做我们不喜欢的事情。

“只要 存在核武器”

伊朗拥有一些核武器的伊朗是否会阻止美国和其他人的传统能力，即使它们具有压倒性的传统能力？

很难看为什么为什么其他核大国（其中一些是我们或其他核力量的潜在对手）同意只要美国追求军事优势和不受限制的前瞻性进攻行动，就会同意从深度削减局限于实际的核裁军。俄罗斯和中国在开发传统的迅速全球罢工远程武器具有强硬目标杀伤能力时会同意进行核切割，从而威胁其剩余的力量？

Would Japan agree to the United States eliminating the nuclear umbrella as long as China modernizes and builds up it conventional capabilities? Would Israel agree to disarmament as long as they are surrounded by conventionally armed potential enemies?

Many government and military officials therefore effectively dismiss disarmament by saying: not until there is peace and brotherhood among men. In other words, certainly not in our lifetime or that of our children. Obama’s policy to some extend acknowledges this with a second caveat by talking about the “long road” toward elimination of nuclear weapons.

Ideally, these threats and insecurities must be addressed in a broader context of the relations between states and of the legitimacy of force but, no, all the world’s security problems do not have to be solved before we can consider the elimination of nuclear weapons. Three points are important particularly from a U.S. perspective.

First, there is no need to give some fifth-rate country like North Korea a veto over U.S. nuclear policy. North Korea may very well be developing nuclear weapons to deter the United States but that does not mean the United States, with overwhelming conventional military superiority, needs to have nuclear weapons to deter North Korea, even North Korea’s nuclear use.

Second, the nuclear disarmament of the big nuclear powers will make the nuclear disarmament of troublesome regimes like Iran and North Korea easier, not harder. Some Iranians talk of their nuclear program making them a “world power,” a conceit that would be completely laughable except the established nuclear powers do, in fact, often attach such significance to simply owning nuclear weapons. Delegitimizing nuclear weapons reduces their appeal. North Korea provides a different example: the United States, China, and Russia publicly claim that North Korea’s nuclear weapon program is intolerable, a concern that has only slowly impressed itself on the North Koreans. But imagine that China, the North’s only real patron, had eliminated its own weapons; would the Chinese tolerate their tiny neighbor’s nuclear program then?

第三，也许最重要的是，尽管全球核裁军可能取决于世界对武力使用和合法性的态度的重大变化，但致力于核裁军可以做出很大的变化。不愿意通过采取大胆的单方面步骤来开始这一过程，例如弹头数量的大量减少以及改变所有核力量及其盟友的思维方式的成功，“漫长的道路”确实可能很长。

尽管有这些缺口，奥巴马的核政策将成为美国政策，这将是恢复传统的美国核政策优先事项并削减核武器在世界上的作用和显着性的迈出巨大一步。通过解决我们所描述的问题，它甚至可能金博宝正规网址是核武器结束的开始。

背景：Obama’s Plan for a 21st Century Military|Missions for Nuclear Weapons After the Cold War