The Nuclear Posture Review: America as Rogue State?
Excerpted from a speech by Ira Shorr, delivered in Portland on May 15, 2002,
sponsored by the Campaign for Responsible Defense
"Are they out of their minds?! --- Bill Keller, New York Times
Ira Shorr of Back from the Brink, speaking in Portland
On March 12, a New York Times editorial titled "America as Nuclear Rogue" began:
"If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper. Mr. Bush needs to send the document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future generations."
US military policy is now in the hands of the most conservative and militarily hawkish men and women. Standing behind an American flag, they are pushing their September 10th agenda on a post-September 11th frightened country.
The leak of the classified parts of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) lays bare the degree to which nuclear strategists in the Department of Defense are now thinking the unthinkable‹how and when to use nuclear weapons.
Do we really want to restart the arms race by building new nuclear weapons that are more "usable"? Do we want to lower the bar for actually using nuclear weapons? The NPR envisions the United States launching a nuclear first strike "against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack," or "in the event of surprising military developments."
The NPR calls for continuing to target Russia and China with nukes, and adds that, "In setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies."
The NPR declares, "the need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will be able, if directed, to design, develop, manufacture and certify new warheads." It looks for "desired capabilities for nuclear weapons in flexible, adaptable strike plans that include options for variable and reduced yields, high accuracy, and timely employment."
The views expressed in the NPR are the culmination of a growing push by hard-liners‹inside and outside government‹to make nuclear weapons more "usable" and relevant in a post-Cold War world where small-time dictators and terrorist threats have replaced the Soviet Union as the enemy.
A good analogy might be to look at who is controlling the Bush administration's energy and environmental policies. Corporate chieftains from oil, gas, and coal, the people who brought you pollution in the first place, are in charge of reducing pollution and designing energy policy.
The people who brought you the winnable nuclear war‹who run nuclear weapons labs and hard-right foreign policy think tanks are joined by the hardest liners from the Bush Sr. administration.
So What Will This Mean? Where Are We Headed?Back to the reality of what nuclear weapons are. As McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson said over three decades ago, "In the real world of political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city would be recognized in advance as a catastrophic blunder; ten bombs on 10 cities would be a disaster beyond history, and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities unthinkable."
Or as Paul Nitze, a former arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration said in 2000, "I think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us. It is impossible to conceive of a target that could be hit without large-scale destruction of many innocent people." Nitze concluded by saying that, "I know that the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination."
The Bush administration's NPR assumes nuclear weapons will be part of US military forces for the next 50 years, this despite the pledge the United States and other nuclear powers took in signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to work for general and complete disarmament under effective international control.
It does call for reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but instead of dismantling these nuclear weapons, the Pentagon wants to keep some 2400 of them in reserve, and in operational condition, so they could be deployed again, and they want to stockpile more warheads in non-operational status.
The Natural Resources Defense Council notes that the "Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000. The administration rationalizes this by saying they need the flexibility to have more nukes if conditions change in the world.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the 192 nuclear warheads carried on one invulnerable Trident submarine‹less than three percent of the U.S. arsenal‹could cause more than 50 million casualties.
Robert McNamara noted that, even if we reduce down to 2,200 nukes on each side, we still have the equivalent of 100,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
We are headed toward the development of a new, supposedly "usable" nuclear weapon to hit dictators or terrorist operations buried deep in the earth.
The money was okayed in the House Armed Services Committee, but not in the Senate committee, though Senator Collins voted for it.
This lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons. It blurs the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons. It shatters the internationally accepted principle, based on both moral and practical considerations, that nukes are qualitatively different.
The Federation of American Scientists points out that there is no way an atomic bomb can penetrate the earth deeply enough to contain the explosion. The bomb would create a fireball through the earth's surface and release a radioactive cloud of dust and debris. If detonated in an urban setting, 10,000 to 50,000 people would receive a fatal dose of radiation within the first 24 hours. This does not take into account traumatic injuries arising from the extreme pressures of the blast or thermal injuries arising from the heat of the explosion. Nor does the casualty estimate consider the consequences of fires and the collapse of buildings from the seismic shock that the explosion would produce.
Moreover, proceeding with the production of RNEPs would significantly undermine the global non-proliferation regime, because the obvious targets for these weapons are non-nuclear weapon states. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prohibits the use of nuclear weapons against such states.
As former Sec'y. of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "The basic implication of the NPR, that the United States reserves the right to target any nation with nuclear weapons whenever it chooses to do so, is itself likely to increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation."
When George W. Bush was running for office, he talked about the danger of having nuclear weapons on high-alert, hair-trigger status. He called them an anachronism of the Cold War, and dangerous. The Nuclear Posture Review calls for the United States to continue the cold war policy of maintaining scores of nuclear weapons on full alert --- ready to be launched in minutes. These are the weapons that are, right now, on the front line of usability. They are the missiles that can be launched in minutes.
Former Senator Sam Nunn noted that the threats we faced during the Cold War were due to Soviet strength. The threats we face today come more from Soviet weakness. Russia's deteriorating economy has led to the severe erosion of its command and control systems for nuclear weapons, and their early warning systems, the systems that had for years prevented the calamity of a launch of nuclear weapons by mistake or miscalculation. Theses systems are no longer reliable.
But now Russia is almost blind. Its satellite early warning radar is no longer working. This leaves only ground radar, meaning they can't tell accurately the trajectory of an incoming rocket. At the same time, they have a large portion of their nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. If the US and Russia are truly no longer enemies they should stop threatening each other with a quick launch of nuclear weapons.
There is the real danger that down the road, with nuclear weapons being brandished like pistols from a holster, and the United States and Russia --- and maybe China --- and other nations having weapons primed for a quick launch, one false move and it will be all over.
This is all being done in our name and with our tax dollars. What we want instead:
Needed: A Public Outcry
- Nuclear weapons slated for elimination should be taken off-line immediately.
- These warheads should be removed from missiles and stored, secured and verified as quickly as possible;
- These warheads should be dismantled as part of a legally-binding treaty, making the "reductions" irreversible.
- The United States and Russia should work to remove all their nuclear weapons from high-alert status;
- No funds should be made available for the development of new nuclear weapons or for nuclear testing;
- Congress, the public and the media should demand a full and open debate on the nuclear weapons policies promoted by the NPR
As former head of the US Strategic Command Lee Butler has said: "We in the US cannot at once hold sacred the mystery of life while we retain the capacity to destroy it."
Ira Shorr is the director of Back From the Brink in Washington, D.C.
Back to Peace Talk Index, Summer, 2002
