Flying at altitude: Obama balances disarmament against US nuclear primacy

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama pledged to implement a new direction in US nuclear weapons policy. He would ‘show the world’ that the United States believed in its existing commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In other words, he committed to working towards, ultimately, eliminating all nuclear weapons. In his 2009 speech in Prague, Obama defined this transformative quest in greater detail and in doing so suggested what appeared to be a marked break from the policies of his predecessor. The Bush administration had banished the term ‘disarmament’ from its official vocabulary and broken with past nuclear policy pronouncements by pushing vigorously for an expanded role for nuclear weapons. There has indeed been a break from the declarations of an ‘American Century’. However, while the Obama administration has presented optimistic rhetoric on disarmament, it has in essence pursued a policy of maintaining the nuclear balance while only taking incremental steps towards disarmament. These steps, I will argue, have been accompanied by clear measures to retain US nuclear primacy. This article will focus on the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations and, more specifically, the extent to which Obama has attempted to ‘rebalance’ the nuclear option.