Deadly Adversary

Fourteen years ago, Barack Obama warned that fatalism was our fiercest foe

Barack Obama, the most unlikely of American presidents, strode to the podium on April 5, 2009 in Prague, the most unlikely of venues, to pledge something that even some of his closest advisors thought impossible. With his speech, the new president would launch a policy initiative that would have to overcome the crises and opponents that dominated the political landscape. He was keenly aware of the moment.

Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash

A cheering crowd of thousands greeted President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as they took the stage on this early spring morning. At the base of the stage, attendees waved a flurry of small flags. Large Czech, American, and European Union flags hung behind the crowd. Attendees had been gathering since dawn for the late morning speech. Druhá Tráva, a Czech band, opened the event with a bluegrass set, including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Girl of the North Country” - in Czech. As the audience waited for the President to take the stage, recorded music from bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire and U2 echoed off the walls of the square.

The presidential podium stood on stage in Prague’s Hradcany Square, overlooking the storied, red-roofed city. Above the square towered Prague Castle, a 9th century fortification that has been the seat of power for kings, the Holy Roman Emperor, and, today, the Czech president. Near the podium stood a statue of Thomas Masaryk, who in 1918 returned to Prague Castle as the first president of the independent Czechoslovak Republic.

In the wings to the left of the President’s podium stood his corps of advisors – Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Senior Advisor David Axelrod, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, and Gary Samore, the National Security Council’s coordinator for preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The President and First Lady smiled and waved to the enthusiastic crowd. Obama opened his speech by thanking the people of Prague and the Czech Republic. He reminded his audience that fifty years ago, few would have believed that an African-America president would speak to an audience in Prague, in the heart of a free and united Europe. With emotional admiration for the dramatic history of the now democratic Czech Republic Obama said, “Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams. We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change.”

In 1948, a coup d’état had brought a communist government to power in Czechoslovakia, and drew the country into the Soviet orbit. Czechoslovakia would remain behind the “Iron Curtain” until 1989 when a student-inspired, peaceful uprising – the Velvet Revolution – brought down the communist government and lead to a democratic Czech Republic. Obama continued,

Sametová Revoluce – the Velvet Revolution taught us many things. It showed us that peaceful protest could shake the foundations of an empire, and expose the emptiness of an ideology. It showed us that small countries can play a pivotal role in world events, and that young people can lead the way in overcoming old conflicts. And it proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.

The crowd welcomed his remarks with rousing applause.

Beyond the cheers, the political tone in Prague was less amenable. In recent months, stiff opposition had grown against U.S. plans for an anti-ballistic missile installation. In July 2008, the Bush Administration had secured the permission of governments of Poland and the Czech Republic for the construction of the base. The agreements were signed as tensions grew between Russia and Georgia, in the prelude to the Russian invasion later that August.

The Bush administration promoted the weapons as necessary to defend Europe against potential Iranian missiles. But Russia saw the missile defense agreements as a strategic challenge from NATO and the United States. And in the view of some Czech citizens, the proposed radar installation made the Czech Republic a potential Russian military target while giving them little added security. Seventy percent of Czech citizens opposed the deal, and their opinions were vocal. By March 2009, when it became clear the opposition parties could defeat the plan, the Czech prime minister who had endorsed the deal withdrawn it from Parliament. On the day of Obama’s speech, a group of protestors wearing white masks, representing the “invisible” majority of Czechs opposing the new weapons, filled sidewalks around the city. Protestors hung banners from Prague’s Charles Bridge saying “Yes we can – say no to U.S. military base.” The Czechs attending were acutely attentive to the President’s words on this hot issue.

His speech turned to policy. Obama had been in office for just over two months. He faced no shortage of pressing international issues, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global economic crisis, climate change, and persisting tensions with Iran and North Korea. Obama reminded the crowd, “None of these challenges can be solved quickly or easily. But all of them demand that we listen to one another and work together; that we focus on our common interests, not on occasional differences; and that we reaffirm our shared values, which are stronger than any force that could drive us apart.”

Photo by Martin Krchnacek on Unsplash

President Obama shifted to the core of the speech. “Now, one of those issues that I'll focus on today is fundamental to the security of our nations and to the peace of the world – that's the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.”

Barack Obama’s concern about nuclear dangers went back to his early years. As an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1983, Obama wrote an article for the college paper titled “Breaking the War Mentality.”  Obama’s article gave attention to student organizations and their efforts as they rallied support for the nuclear freeze movement – a movement that had drawn one million supporters to a rally in New York City’s Central Park in 1982. Later as a U.S. Senator, Obama worked with Republican Senators Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel on programs to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and prevent nuclear terrorism by securing and eliminating the global stockpiles of nuclear bomb materials. Early in his presidential campaign in October 2007, then-Senator Obama said:

Here’s what I’ll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons. We will not pursue unilateral disarmament. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong nuclear deterrent. But we'll keep our commitment under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty on the long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons.

It was a bold move for a young, relatively unknown senator to come out so far on an issue so early in a presidential campaign. It was a major reason that I enlisted as an advisor to his then-underdog campaign. Yet he carried his position on nuclear disarmament through the election. When Time interviewed President-elect Obama in December 2008, the reporter asked Obama what issues kept him awake at night. Obama listed nuclear proliferation third – just after the ongoing economic collapse and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama was personally committed to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons to the United States and other nations and working towards their eventual elimination. But politicians say many things while campaigning for office. The question was if he would turn his nuclear views into policy once in the White House.

Arms control experts and advocates anxiously anticipated this moment. The question for these non-governmental organizations was not if, but how the President would say it. The broad policy points of the Obama strategy had already been outlined in the campaign. They expected that the President’s speech would announce a plan to seek a follow on agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and a timeframe for getting the nuclear test ban treaty ratified by the Senate. They were encouraged by the ambitious joint US-Russia statement issued just days earlier in London after Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. They knew that the President would have to address how to deal with the spread of nuclear weapons to North Korea and Iran. What they did not know was how bold the President would be. Would he offer specific targets for reductions with Russia – perhaps to 1000 weapons?  Could he propose the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. bases in Europe?  What would he say was the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal?

President Obama moved to a more pressing tone, and he reminded his audiences of the nuclear threats we face:

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.

That very day, the world had been reminded of these threats. At 4:30 am on the morning of Obama’s speech, Robert Gibbs woke up the President with word that North Korea had tested a long-range ballistic missile.  The North’s two-stage missile, theoretically capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, flew over Japan and splashed into the Pacific Ocean after flying 1300 miles.

Obama continued:

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked – that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

President Obama then declared:

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."

Presidents from Harry Truman on had said they wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons. But President Obama was linking that goal to a set of near-term objectives, setting out a practical policy agenda that rejected the existing Cold War paradigms.

As long as these weapons existed, he said, the United States would maintain a “safe, secure, and effective arsenal,” but “to put an end to Cold War thinking” the point of his policy would be to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same.” He pledged to negotiate a new arms reduction treaty the the Russians that year, “setting the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.”

He said he would “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” to achieve a global ban on nuclear testing and cut off the building blocks need for a bomb by seeking a new treaty to ban production of the fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) needed for nuclear weapons. He would strengthen the barriers to new nations’ getting the bomb with “real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules.” He would “ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon” by “a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.”

There was more. He said he wished to negotiate in good faith with Iran and to break up the black markets that trade in nuclear technology. He supported an international fuel bank so nations could not creep up to the nuclear threshold by building national uranium-enrichment facilities. It was a long list, but the crowd listened patiently, even eagerly. They wanted the specifics, not just pretty words. But the president did not disappoint rhetorically. He ended with a stirring cry to action.

Now, I know that there are some who will question whether we can act on such a broad agenda. There are those who doubt whether true international cooperation is possible, given inevitable differences among nations. And there are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it's worth setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve.

But make no mistake: We know where that road leads. When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens. When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also a cowardly thing to do. That's how wars begin. That's where human progress ends…

I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

Those are the voices that still echo through the streets of Prague. Those are the ghosts of 1968. Those were the joyful sounds of the Velvet Revolution. Those were the Czechs who helped bring down a nuclear-armed empire without firing a shot.

Human destiny will be what we make of it. And here in Prague, let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it. Thank you, Prague.

The struggle for transformation had begun.

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This issue of the Strategy & History newsletter is adapted from the opening chapter in my book, Nuclear Nightmares, Securing the World Before It Is Too Late (Columbia University Press, 2013). In later newsletters, I will explore how President Obama tried to implement his vision, the progress he made, and why he ultimately failed.