ABSTRACT
Despite a high-profile commitment to nuclear disarmament marked by President Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague, in which he endorsed a world without nuclear weapons, his administration has elected to move slowly on the issue of US tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) deployed in Europe. This choice reflects the administration’s drive to avoid conflicts with NATO allies and with Congressional Republicans. Some NATO members want the weapons to be removed, while others continue to see them as important elements in alliance cohesion, and the administration has opted for a policy that seeks to conceal these divisions. Likewise, to quickly negotiate and win Senate approval of the New START treaty, the administration chose to leave the issue out of the accord while also placating Republican criticisms that the treaty failed to address the disparity between US and Russian TNWs by committing to future negotiations with Russia. The effort to conceal these internal and external divisions by calling for mutual reductions in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals does not appear promising in the short term. Russia continues to insist that it will not participate in negotiations on TNWs until the United States withdraws its weapons from Europe. It has few immediate internal and external incentives to budge from this position, particularly given Moscow’s perception that, over the long term, alliance budgetary and political pressures may force a unilateral withdrawal without the need for any Russian concessions (see Chapter 9 by Nikolai N. Sokov in this volume). In the meantime, the Obama administration policy buttresses the status quo while examining some options for increasing transparency and confidencebuilding measures regarding TNWs. However, this is not a position that can be held indefinitely.
