Present United States nuclear policy appears on the verge of undoing decades of
nuclear weapons taboos. But for some in the administration, that's good news,
and indications exist that it was the concepts embodied in a conservative
think-tank report which helped frame the parameters of this transition.
Dr Keith Payne was the Bush administration's deputy assistant secretary of
defense for forces and policy until June 2003. That means that he was the
Pentagon's key civilian figure involved in how the US views the retention,
development and use of nuclear weapons. He is also someone who believes in the
efficacy of nuclear weapons and warfare. And a major push to create new nuclear
weapons and substantively expand America's nuclear weapons complex is presently
ongoing.
Highlighting a perspective long held by the nuclear hawks was an article Payne
co-authored during the summer of 1980 preceding Ronald Reagan's election,
"Victory is Possible". It stated that America "should not launch a nuclear
strike if expected US casualties are likely to involve 100 million or more
American citizens", with the implication being that anything under that number
was somehow "acceptable". But it was concurrently noted that a good offensive
plan, "wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce US casualties to
approximately 20 million", and the US abrogated the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile
Treaty to build just such defenses.
Notably, in his article Payne condemned the US defense community for regarding
"strategic nuclear war not as war but as a holocaust". And his ideas appear to
have gained a resonance within the Bush White House.
While a US nuclear weapons debate is ongoing, and there is Congressional,
bi-partisan opposition to a number of administration proposals, Payne is
perceived by many to have effectively shaped a US movement towards the
development and use of the nuclear option. A January 2001 report he directed
while president of the conservative National Institute for Public Policy
(NIPP), "Rationale and Requirements for US Nuclear Forces and Arms Control",
was heavily reflected in the administration's subsequent December 31, 2001
Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a document laying out America's official nuclear
weapons policy.
US nuclear weapons and policy expert Joseph Cirincione, director for
non-proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, drew
parallels for Asia Times Online between the neo-conservative Project for a New
American Century's (PNAC) foreign-policy blueprint, "Rebuilding America's
Defenses", and the NIPP's nuclear weapons plan. Both were drafted by groups
heavily comprised of those who are presently within the Bush administration,
both were key documents in influencing official US policy.
Cirincione described the present US nuclear push as "an ideological issue that
has become a key part of the agenda for leading administration officials". And
the nuclear issue appears to devastatingly parallel prior policy undertaking by
America's neo-conservative community.
In a description of the process through which the administration came to
embrace the philosophy provided by PNAC, one often heard descriptions of small
groups of ideologues, "like minded individuals", often from the conservative
think-tanks, placed strategically within various offices of the federal
bureaucracy. An article this journalist wrote last October for the Sydney
Morning Herald, "Cheney's hawks hijacking policy", reported on the phenomena,
and the revelations a former senior-level Pentagon staffer provided in blowing
the whistle on the political network, and the way these political appointees
precipitated Iraq's invasion.
"How do these crazy ideas get brought into the administration and adopted so
quickly - they worked it out beforehand," said Cirincione, with his remarks not
aimed at the Iraq invasion but America's nuclear posture. He added that it
wasn't a conspiracy, but rather groups of committed ideologues who, "when they
came in, it [a US nuclear posture plan] was all ready to go."
Numerous media reports on the origins of the Iraq invasion have similarly
detailed allegations of a limited group of ideologues who had a pre-existing
plan that they had pushed. Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, was particularly cited for his involvement via the now discredited
Office of Special Plans, which was under his authority. Feith has also been
particularly active on the administration's nuclear questions, with his
appointment to the government's Nuclear Weapons Council formally urged this
February.
Highlighting an alternative perspective within US nuclear circles, Cirincione
pointedly noted: "There are dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons scientists who
think it's crazy that we need new weapons or new more usable nuclear weapons
... there's a small handful of people behind this."
Reflecting what Cirincione called the small but "quite well placed", US nuclear
constituency, the NPR stated: "Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope
and purpose will complement other military capabilities." With this, the
nuclear option is being effectively integrated into the range of available
military responses, a triumph for those hawks who have long viewed such weapons
as only a particular military tool.
In keeping with such a philosophy, a new generation of nuclear weaponry is
being sought, particularly specialized-use weapons and so-called "mini-nukes",
weapons with a power of less than 5 kilotons of TNT. In early August 2003, a
one-day conference on such nuclear weaponry was held at US Strategic Air
Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Congressional Research Service notes that Admiral James Ellis, commander,
US Strategic Command, wrote that Strategic Command had an interest in
"examining the merits of precision, increased penetration and reduced yields
for our nuclear weapons". But as to the actual demand for such weaponry, the
National Nuclear Security Administration's (the agency which oversees nuclear
weapons production) director had acknowledged that there was "no requirement to
actually develop any new [nuclear] weapons at this time".
While similar nuclear force concepts to those being proposed had been rejected
during the height of the Cold War, and eschewed by America's last three
presidents, this administration appears to be making them policy. Beyond this,
the Bush administration will spend over 50 percent more on nuclear weapons this
year, and for the next five years, than was the yearly average during the Cold
War (in 2004 dollar terms).
While President George W Bush has stated that he will cut the number of nuclear
warheads the US deploys from 6,000 to somewhere between 1,700 and 2,200,
critics charge this has served to obscure the reality of the substantive
weapons programs, and their cost. It's also charged that the cuts have helped
conceal the attempt to eliminate institutional and psychological barriers
between nuclear and conventional weaponry.
In a May 13, 2003 report, the BBC noted that Pentagon officials had sought such
nuclear-friendly changes since the Summer of 2002, when they began "to develop
plans to reshape the US nuclear arsenal to take account of the new doctrine of
pre-emption". Reflecting on the pursuit of these weapons programs, former US
vice president Al Gore has been quoted describing the administration's weapons
initiative as "true madness".
In the NIPP report, one example of the potential application of nuclear weapons
was their use against mobile missile launchers, such as those the Iraqis used
in the first Gulf War of 1991. The report suggested that if the locations of
launchers couldn't be pinpointed for a conventional strike, "suspected
deployment areas might be subjected to multiple nuclear strikes".
Issues of civilian casualties, radioactive fallout, long-term environmental
contamination, and the very illegitimacy of a nuclear weapon's use, all appear
to have been discounted from the military equation.
US security and defense expert John Pike of Global Security told Asia Times
Online that the American military would not seek to employ such "nuclear
strikes", and the ongoing nuclear initiative does not appear militarily driven.
Pike elaborated on the ideologues' current drive for increasing US nuclear
forces, saying: "It's been part of their doctrinal creed for so long that it's
reflexive on their part ... it's their religion." More ominously, Pike noted
that Payne "has always understood that a splendid first-strike capability, a
splendid damage denial posture, which was what they wanted during the Cold War
... that missile defense has always been the key to that. And now they're
working on it."
In a July 15, 2001 article in the Observer of Britain, "Dr Strangelove rides
again", broad concerns presented by the evolving US nuclear posture were
reported. "The real issue, experts insist, is not whether an anti-missile
system is feasible or desirable, but what kind of military and diplomatic
policies a US ... would enact under a protective umbrella able to neutralize
the threat of a nuclear strike on the US mainland.
In this context, it is important to note that the evolution of the
administration's nuclear posture preceded September 11.
Pike knows Payne dating from the early 1980s, when the two regularly debated
the Reagan administration's Star Wars program in the areas around Washington
DC's Beltway. With a note of frustration apparent in his voice, Pike said that
"the thing that's so idiotic about this stuff, the targets that they would be
attacking over there [places such as Iraq and Afghanistan] are not targets that
you would attack with nuclear weapons."
Providing another dimension to nuclear usage, and emphasized in both Payne's
work and the NPR, was the use of nuclear weapons to achieve "political
objectives". As noted by Payne as early as his 1980 article: "Such a function
requires American strategic forces that would enable a president to initiate
strategic nuclear use for coercive, though politically defensive, purposes ...
strategic targeting must have a unity of political purpose from the first to
the last strikes."
As regards an aspect of this recalling Israel's 1981 leveling of Iraq's Osirak
reactor, as early as 2002, speculation existed that the Bush nuclear policy
indicates that the actual prevention of proliferation may well be an American
attack, conventional or otherwise.
Nuclear policy expert Christopher Paine, senior analyst in the Natural Resource
Defense Council's nuclear program and author of the recent report "Weaponeers
of Waste", told Asia Times Online: "The ideal world for the Bush administration
is one in which US conventional forces can work their will without fear of
being deterred by Weapons of Mass Destruction." Paine also observed that the
administration's current nuclear efforts "represent a violation of article 6 of
the Non-proliferation Treaty [NPT]".
Separately, Cirincione had said: "Most of the officials in the current
administration see the treaties as something to be tolerated, not necessarily
something to be honored." Notably, at the time of the NPR's release, then US
assistant defense secretary J D Crouch spoke of achieving a reduction in
overall nuclear warheads "without having to wait for Cold War arms-control
treaties", reflecting the administration's desire to avoid such commitments.
Further, and reflecting US moves towards a possible resumption of US nuclear
testing, the Bush administration has voiced reservations about the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with administration officials specifically
noting that the US is now opposed to it.
Paradoxically, in Bush's 2004 State of the Union address, he outlined that
America is "demanding that Iran meet its commitments", and not pursue a nuclear
weapons program in violation of the NPT. Reflecting present concerns, as early
as 2000, former US president Jimmy Carter had warned that the world was indeed
facing a "nuclear crisis", adding that "US policy has had a good deal to do
with creating it".
Tomorrow, Part 2: US and preemptive nuclear weapons
Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in
Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney
Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the
Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for information on our
sales and syndication policies.)
