President elect Obama and the US Congress – What to expect?

During the US Presidential election campaign Barack Obama pledged on at least two occasions to take strong nuclear disarmament steps if he became president including leading an effort to achieve a nuclear weapons free world.

In the month since his successful election, has President-elect Obama given indications that he intends to fulfill these pledges, or are the politics of building a cross-partisan team and dealing with vested pro-nuclear interests dragging him back towards a more limited agenda?

Change Nuclear Weapons Policy? Yes, We Can.

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency represents a clear mandate for change on a number of fronts, including transforming outdated U.S. policy on nuclear weapons and reviving U.S. leadership on disarmament and non-proliferation. The job now is to get the needed support in Congress and the international arena.

- Daryl Kimball
Foreign Policy in Focus
25 November 2008


Some critics claim that Obama’s appointment of Robert Gates as Secretary for Defence indicates a backward slide. In a keynote address just before the election, Gates supported the development of a new nuclear weapon (the ‘reliable replacement warhead’), argued that the US should maintain its nuclear stockpile as long as other States possessed or sought to possess nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and claimed that US nuclear weapons deter others from developing such weapons.

However, Daryl Kimball argues that Obama is committed to nuclear disarmament and is likely to lead his new administration on a determined and comprehensive disarmament path. Kimball, in an article in Foreign Policy in Focus, says that Obama demonstrated his capacity to work cross-party on concrete nuclear disarmament steps in Senate resolution 1977 which he co-sponsored with Republican Chuck Hagel. This included key steps that Obama re-affirmed in his election campaign including de-alerting current stockpiles, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiating further stockpile reductions with Russia, commencing negotiations on a fissile materials treaty and internationalising proliferation-sensitive nuclear fuel cycle capacities.

Kimball indicates that support in the US Congress and internationally is vital for the achievement of a number of these steps.

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