What the Publics Want

by CKR

Public opinion alone isn’t necessarily a good basis for foreign policy, but when it coincides with the opinions of those who have held high posts in the government and those of many professionals, it can be a unifying political force.

That’s the case for sharply decreasing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons. It’s why I’ve suggested that the Democrats use this issue as a way of distinguishing themselves from what is becoming the war party and indicating to the world that America is still a force for peace. I’m not talking about unilateral disarmament, but negotiated, verified and safeguarded mutual reductions among the nuclear weapon states, just like George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn said.

I would be happy to see the Republicans take up this issue, too, but that seems less probable. As we shall see, the Republican electorate is much more favorably inclined toward nuclear weapons than Democrats are.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland has conducted a poll in the United States and Russia on attitudes toward nuclear weapons. By and large, both publics would like to see the numbers of nuclear weapons greatly reduced, even eliminated if safeguards are in place to make sure nobody’s cheating.

By and large, Russians are more suspicious than the Americans; but even there, majorities are for arms reductions. And they likely would get less suspicious if there was movement on the American side.

On to the specifics of the poll.

When Americans were asked how many nuclear weapons they thought the United States has, the median of the answers was 1000. When asked how many they thought the United States should have, the median was 500. They were consistent when asked about reductions further than those provided by the Treaty of Moscow (2200 by 2012): 71% of Americans and 58% of Russians favored a treaty with further reductions, similar numbers favoring faster reductions, and overall 88% and 65% favoring the treaty.

That number of 1000 is far below the reality of almost 10,000 (with perhaps as many pits stored disassembled). The 500 number is close to the few hundred advocated by many groups; actually 200-300 tends to be that range.

Both publics are for the major arms control treaties. They favor (69% Americans, 67% Russians) the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and think their countries (79% Americans, 66% Russians) should do more toward that goal. They favor the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (80% and 79%). And they are willing to see increased safeguards measures via international inspections. Americans (92%) and Russians (65%) feel that increased verification would be necessary if the numbers of nukes were reduced to 400 on each side by treaty, and 69% of Americans and 51% of Russians thought that international inspectors had the right limits on their activity or too many limits.

The publics would also go beyond the current treaties. Only 25% of Americans and 11% of Russians believe that nuclear weapons can be an appropriate response to non-nuclear attacks. Americans (54%) felt that nuclear fuel guarantees through the UN were a good idea. They favor (64% Americans, 55% Russians) a ban on production of fissionable materials.

Reactions to sharing information were mixed. Although both Americans (75%) Russians (52%) favor an international agreement to share information on numbers of nuclear weapons and materials, only 44% of each favored more information sharing between the two under current programs.

Finally, majorities believe (64% Americans, 55% Russians) that missiles should be taken off alert status.

Within the United States, in response to most of the poll’s questions, Republicans like nuclear weapons better than Democrats do. The issue is not one with immediate impact, like taxes, or with the emotional volatility of immigration. It can be approached as a way to improve security (secure nuclear materials from theft, de-alerting of missiles to avoid disastrous accidents). But the Democratic candidates so far, with the exception of a white paper from Bill Richardson that isn’t widely available, have muffled their stands on these issues. The Republican candidates haven’t even done that.

Clear stands in line with public opinion on these issues could help to unify the country and would signal to the voters and the rest of the world that America is returning to its belief in working things out, the way we built the peace in the last half of the twentieth century.

Comments

[gundars k zentelis]

Can we truly say that a public opinion poll represents the voice, the will of the people? Too often these polls have attained the status of commercially loaded preordained managed impulse reactions, based upon pretested questions formed to elicit a desired response. Were it possible to have regular knowledge of what the people think and desire based upon their own unimpaired/unmanipulated understanding, we'd all benefit and begin speaking to one another directly, begin to enjoy each other's company in conversation and dialogue on the issues of the day But so far we seem to be mum in each other's presence, awkward and downright goofy in our language skills indicating a significant lack of practice. An of course our educational system has very little use for non-business language skills, so one would have to say we're not in a position these days to really know what the people think or understand of nuclear weapons' purpose or practice.

[CKR]

However imperfect they may be (and I think less so than Gundars Zentelis suggests), polls are one way of learning what people think. To dismiss them entirely is foolish.

PIPA is run by the University of Maryland, hardly a commercial enterprise.

I'd like to see more dialog on this issue too. But dialog will give each of us only an anecdotal understanding, based on the limited number of people we've talked to.

[Paul]

Does the poll even really matter. The fact of the matter is that we must maintain our large nuclear arsenal because of the increasing threats of other nuclear nations such as N. Korea and Iran. The best defense from these nations is the defense that we used against the U.S.S.R during the cold war, namely "mutually assured destruction." This form of defense simply intimidates our enemies into not using nuclear weapons because they will be hit with multiple nuclear strikes. This is why it is preferable to maintain our large nuclear arsenal.

[gundars k zentelis]

I can think of no national enterprise untainted by commercial interest. The corporate life of which most of us are servants and petty associates, is the only life extant in our states. Former academies with reputations for scholarship and scientific research, all have succumbed to capital stock punishment. Our social, national fabric is a corporate cloth that does not lend itself to individual, personal habit. And as our eight-year olds inherit the means of credit, they become powerful mindless arbiters of the things and services that represent our most middle game of what's left of us as former human beings haunted by enlarged,painted, blinking numbers that alone speak directly to our zero-sum bypassed hearts. If the truth be foolish, I call for all of it.

[PHK]

Paul: I disagree with you that the US needs to maintain a huge nuclear arsenal to fend off the likes of North Korea and Iran (which has no nukes at least for the next several years).

The only country that has anywhere near the equivalent to the US in the nuclear weapons arena is the Russian Federation and I remain convinced that the most effective way to deal with the Russians is through serious bilateral negotiations. Unfortunately, this administration has thumbed its nose at such negotiations.

I was no Reagan fan, but I did and do agree with him and his advisors that "trust but verify" was the best way to deal with the Soviets on national security - and other - issues. MAD, after all may have been effective in the 1950s - but by the 1980s when the Soviets were looking for ways to cut their nuclear and non-nuclear arsenals "trust but verify" was far more useful.

[CKR]

I'll expand a bit from what PHK has said.

I agreed right up front in my post with Paul that public opinion alone should not drive foreign policy. What I find striking is how much agreement there is among the public and various thinkers on the subject of nuclear arsenals.

Harold Brown and John Deutch recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, supposedly disagreeing with an earlier op-ed by George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn. But both op-eds mentioned reasonable numbers for the US nuclear arsenal in the several hundred range, in contrast to the current almost ten thousand. A range of 200-400 keeps coming up as reasonable in all sorts of publications. This depends, of course, on mutual reductions by Russia, as PHK notes, the only other country that has thousands of nuclear warheads.

The reason for the convergence on the low hundreds is that it is hard to imagine more than a hundred targets for US nuclear weapons. The differences then depend on what one thinks is necessary for reserves and maintenance.

To approach the number in another way, if thousands of nuclear weapons are necessary for a credible deterrent, why are we concerned about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons? It will be years before they have one, many years before they have thousands.

For a country like Iran, a single nuclear strike would be immensely destructive, and fewer than ten would eliminate the country as any sort of relevant power.

Even in the United States or Russia, a single nuclear strike would have enormous repercussions, and a dozen would be extremely disabling.

Jeffrey Lewis has some useful comments today in the Washington Post.