Obama Hands Control Of US Nuclear Policy To The UN?

The Obama administration is placing a key element of its nuclear deterrence strategy in the hands of the United Nations, an organization with one of the poorest records for controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.

Keith B. Payne, a former Pentagon official in charge of nuclear weapons policy, said an alarming feature of the Nuclear Posture Review, made public Tuesday, is that the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the foreign powers that are represented in it will be able to indirectly set U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

"The new NPR appears to place the UN's IAEA and its Board of Governors at the heart of determining U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy options," e-mailed Mr. Payne, who has published several books on nuclear deterrence.

According to the new strategy, the U.S. will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear members that sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, known as the NPT, and comply with its terms. For strategic deterrence purposes, in the case of extreme provocation, the U.S. keeps the right to use or threaten to use nuclear arms against nuclear states and NPT signatories for failing to abide by its terms.

The paramount question is: Who will determine whether a state is complying with the treaty?

"This question becomes central to U.S. nuclear deterrence policy," Mr. Payne said in an e-mail to Inside the Ring.

"A quick check will reveal that NPT compliance is determined by the IAEA's Board of Governors a board made up of 35 states, including Russia, China, Venezuela, Mongolia and Cuba."

In addition, the standards used to determine compliance or noncompliance are designed intentionally to be flexible in order to give the board latitude in its findings. Thus, there is no standard definition of noncompliance.

The result is that the Obama administration's new strategic nuclear deterrence policy gives a U.N.-based international organization broad authority in the United States' use of nuclear arms.

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