Biden Speech Should Help Administration Regain Control

Today, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech on nuclear weapons that badly needed to be given. Delayed completion of the U.S.-Russia New START agreement has endangered the Obama administration’s tightly-sequenced arms control agenda (New START, Nuke Summit, NPT RevCon, CTBT…FMCT/deep cuts?) During the time since START I’s lapse in December, opponents of the administration’s agenda have become more organized and more vocal, threatening to block progress before it even starts. Yet Biden’s speech today should help the administration reverse these negative trends and regain control over what has become one of its signature foreign policy objectives.

What did Biden do well? He spoke movingly about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, something that gets forgotten in the transaction-oriented culture of Washington and the theory-oriented culture of strategic policy. “The very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction,” he said. “The destroyed world Oppenheimer feared must not ever become a reality.” [All quotes from my notes and not official]

Biden also achieved something very important: he clearly delineated how the Obama administration’s priorities—nuclear reductions, nonproliferation, strategic stability—can provide the U.S. nuclear weapons labs with a reinvigorated mission and sense of purpose. The labs are “true national treasures that deserve our full support,” said Biden. He lauded the labs’ historical role and explained how the bigger FY 2011 nuclear weapons budget “reverses the last decade of dangerous decline” under the Bush administration, when “nuclear facilities were neglected and underfunded.” Biden concluded that “responsible disarmament requires versatile specialists” who provide the scientific and technical expertise to achieve the nation’s national security goals.

In response to my question earlier—political co-optation or chastisement?—Biden went with co-optation. He cited Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, Nunn, and McCain as members of the “emerging bipartisan consensus” on nuclear issues. He triangulated between liberal arms controllers concerned with the bigger FY 2011 nuclear budget and conservative deterrence-freaks alarmed by anybody not named Ronald. “We respectfully disagree” with both groups, he noted. In sum, Biden mostly kept his political nose clean, except for the shots at President Bush’s stewardship of the nuclear complex, and stuck to positive justifications for the administration’s plans.

Finally, Biden said relatively little about international concerns, though he did remark that the NPT “consensus is fraying” and needs to be strengthened. Of all the forums where international relations are too wonky to discuss, I thought National Defense University would have been an exception. I guess not.