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04/07/2010

On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama unveiled a new nuclear weapons policy that says that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The new policy says that the United States would only use its nuclear arsenal to defend itself and allies in "extreme circumstances," and it also rules out a nuclear response to biological, chemical and conventional weapons.

The White House sees its revamped nuclear policy as making good on Obama's promise last year in Prague to work towards a nuclear-free world. "To stop the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent nuclear terrorism, and pursue the day when these weapons do not exist, we will work aggressively to advance every element of our comprehensive agenda -- to reduce arsenals, to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, and to strengthen the (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty)," Obama said Tuesday.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was enthusiastic in his response. "If a leading nuclear power stops making new nuclear warheads and curbs its potential use of nuclear weapons, then that can be described as historic," Westerwelle said at a press conference in Berlin on Wednesday.

In general though, German commentators were not quite as optimistic about a softer America, saying that although they too welcomed the US stance, it might not do much to ease the potential nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea.

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"Barack Obama's new nuclear strategy is a small revolution. Should the US have been ambivalent up until now about which kinds of attacks on it, or its allies, would meet with a nuclear response, Obama has now made the American position fairly clear. The US will only use nuclear weapons against an enemy that also has nuclear weapons at its disposal or one that has deliberately gone against the nonproliferation treaty. It's a warning aimed at North Korea and Iran."

"On the one hand, it's positive news that the US president is clearly defining the use of atomic weapons, indicating they will only be used in extreme situations -- and not even in the case of chemical or biological attacks on the US. There is, however, also a drawback to this softened nuclear policy: The price of an attack using conventional, biological or chemical weapons on the US's allies, on the US's vital interests and on those of America's allies, has become smaller. And because of that, the possibility of war that doesn't go beyond the criteria for a nuclear response will become more possible -- because aggressive nations will no longer be counting on the ultimate retaliation from the US."

The financial daily Handelsblatt writes:

"Barack Obama considers the global arsenal of nuclear weapons to be an evil and he wants to abolish it. To prove how serious he is, he has presented a new nuclear strategy for the US. What George W. Bush only requested eight years ago, Obama now wants to make real. These days, the threat no longer comes from leftovers of the Cold War era, rather they come from failed states and terror networks. And these can rarely be tamed with nuclear threats. That is something we have known ever since Sept. 11, 2001."

"Obama had already made the first military cuts when he put a stop to the air force's favorite project, the F22 fighter jet. His latest line is an entirely expected follow-through. Certainly these announcements are only a starting point. And if it becomes a question of money, then Congress will have to play along. But a start has been made."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"After coming up with a vision for a nuke-free world a year ago, US President Barack Obama has -- rhetorically at least -- defused his country's nuclear policies. That is not an unimportant step. Of course, whether or not this has an equally positive effect on countries like Iran and North Korea -- the sort of effect Obama is hoping for -- is up for debate. The tragedy of this presidency is that Obama's intentions, ones he has been talking about for some time now, keep being rejected by a wall of Republicans, who are, without exception, motivated solely by ideology and whose goal it is to destroy him."

"Can one honestly expect that the way places like Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere perceive the American threat will change? In these capitals, the American threat justifies their own ambitions to stockpile nuclear arsenals. And it is hard to believe that in Tehran, Pyongyang or elsewhere, these ambitions would now be given up."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Just like his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama considers that nuclear warheads are purely political weapons. The highly symbolic position that he has now taken is part of that."

"Obama is reaching out to the entire world, but by doing so he is also shaking his fist at two regimes: The mullahs in Iran and the secretive communists of North Korea are excluded from Washington's latest offer. They comprise Obama's 'Axis of Disobedience.' However unlike his predecessors, the president won't deploy American troops to the Persian Gulf for that reason. Instead he is raising the political pressure on Tehran and Pyongyang at the same time as new sanctions are being tussled over at diplomatic levels."

"Obama wants to show that he's tough. And he must, because he must also make domestic progress at the same time as he takes the first steps towards disarmament. The new START nuclear arms treaty with Russia that the president will sign in Prague on Thursday, will still need to approved by the US Senate. The president will need a two-thirds majority, which means that he will need at least eight Republican votes as well. Furthermore, the latter will gladly use the nuclear disarmament policy as evidence for their claims that Obama is soft and is trying to weaken America."