A nuclear and conventional arms race is being
waged by the administration of US President George W
Bush. Yet the Pentagon acknowledges that the "typical
arms race dynamic in which the adversary seeks to match
or emulate our capabilities is not now plausible", US
conventional power being unassailable. But hundreds of
billions of dollars in defense spending are in question,
with many observers seeing a preemptive nuclear war
potentially in the offing.
In a February 23
report for the US Congress, the Congressional Research
Service (CRS) highlighted that the administration
believes that America must be prepared to strike
preemptively at any threat it perceives as warranting
such. The report also warns that some analysts conclude
the administration presently "foresees the possible
preemptive use of nuclear weapons against nations or
groups that are not necessarily armed with their own".
The ongoing weapons effort undertakes to "push
the envelope in nuclear design", ensuring that US
weapons designers "are at the leading edge of
understanding what might be possible in nuclear
weapons", according to the Department of Defense (DoD).
Asia Times Online came across an outline of
America's military future in a February 2004 report by
the Defense Science Board, an influential DoD panel
established to advise the secretary of defense, now
Donald Rumsfeld. The report is entitled "Future
Strategic Strike Forces" (FSSF), and while reportedly
not yet available for public release, a logical reason
for that could lie in suppressing the fallacies on which
much of the document appears built. An example of such
reasoning was presented in "analyzing" the US military's
shortcomings in Iraq.
While it is now widely
accepted that Iraq never possessed any weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), FSSF urges a US$3 billion
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system be
funded because "we have not found the WMD we know are
there, even with teams on the ground".
While
such logic amply serves to deflect the true reality of
circumstances, the willingness to significantly act on
such misconception provides alarming potential. The
report's authors perceive that: "For targets posing a
time-urgent concern, low-yield, low-fission nuclear
weapons may be the only choice."
Critics
speculate that a "nuke them now and apologize later"
policy may be evolving.
Notably, Under Secretary
of Defense Douglas Feith has repeatedly offered
pronouncements aimed at combating the public's
perception of an unwarranted and dangerous
administration move towards nuclear conflict. Feith has
emphasized that the administration's efforts were making
"the use of nuclear weapons less likely", and that the
nuclear threshold will remain high. Though, it was Feith
who had previously been in authority over the Pentagon's
now discredited Office of Special Plans, blamed by
critics for blatant propagandizing.
John Pike of
Global Security, a leading US security and defense
expert, told Asia Times Online that everyone in
Washington understands that the nuclear threshold is
being lowered, but the question is "whether you think
that's the good news or the bad news". Pike added that
nuclear hawks are "basically attempting to renuclearize
the military", after the first president Bush, and then
president Bill Clinton, made substantive strides away
from nuclear deployments.
Regarding Feith's
assurances, Pike said: "He's saying that for people who
want to hear that ... some people are easily
bewildered." But worse still is what many analysts see
as the developing reality.
CRS pointedly has
noted that with America's conventional military might,
it would be "difficult" to envision circumstances in
which there was "a military need to launch a preemptive
strike with nuclear weapons in the opening phases of a
conflict". But a psychological basis may supercede the
military one.
The executive director of the
Washington-based Arms Control Association, Daryl
Kimball, has described nuclear weapons as "mass terror
weapons whether used by the United States or another
country". And while it's paradoxically the "war on
terror" which is the administration's rationale, the
Iraqi war has helped spawn a new Pentagon focus, one "on
how we will fight, not who we will fight", according to
the CRS, with nuclear weapons now categorically named in
the available US arsenal.
Notably, in a December
2003 report entitled "Bounding the Global War on
Terrorism", one of America's foremost military
strategists, Dr Jeffrey Record, argued that terrorists,
"given their secretive, cellular, dispersed, and
decentralized order of battle ... are not subject to
conventional military destruction." Record and numerous
other military strategists have argued that
"intelligence and muscular policework" is the best
counter-terrorism approach. And CRS has noted that
"al-Qaeda presents few if any targets that would be
suitable for nuclear weapons".
Commenting on one
aspect of the motivation lying behind the
administration's efforts, Pike observed: "They [the
nuclear hawks] have believed for a long time that
nuclear weapons are the answer, and we have just got to
figure out what the question is."
A similar
theme of weaponry providing "answers" runs throughout
the Defense Science Board's report, FSSF. Here a new
"Defense Triad" is envisioned, comprised of: nuclear and
conventional weaponry; active and passive homeland
defenses; and a "responsive infrastructure", meaning a
vastly enhanced and expanded military-industrial
complex.
FSSF postulates: "Modern defense
planning requires the US to develop acquisition programs
that are more flexible and responsive. Such programs
must build on and sustain the US industrial base."
FSSF perceives successful defense as US industry
cranking out an "array of potential alternative
solutions", paralleling Pike's vision of answers looking
for questions. The report urges a "departure from
current practice in which requirements are developed and
levied on the services ... this [new] development
architecture will lead to rapid, spiral developments of
capabilities", which critics have termed a financially
ruinous US arms race with itself.
While the
Pentagon's new defense plans will feed hundreds of
billions dollars to US industry, reports indicate that
the majority of both US industry and military have not
eagerly courted the administration's "largesse". But
critics charge that weapons programs filling corporate
coffers can ensure very filling campaign contributions,
allowing the administration's efforts to continue. And
the administration's push is clear, with its thrust to
develop a "bunker-busting" mini-nuke for $485 million,
even illustrating a willingness to mislead Congress, and
separately, to have apparently even contravened US law.
The FSSF is among those documents championing
the bunker-buster, what has been termed the robust
nuclear earth penetrator (RNEP). It is meant to destroy
deeply buried bunkers, even those hidden under
substantive rock. FSSF describes it as a "clean,
low-yield nuclear weapon". It adds that the nuclear
detonation would be "contained", ensuring that if
detonated against a "near-urban facility", it "may avoid
nearly all collateral casualties".
By contrast,
Dr Sidney Drell, a Stanford University physicist and
longtime advisor to America's nuclear program, observed
that such a detonation, if only 1 kiloton, could
potentially eject a million cubic feet of radioactive
debris, fallout. The CRS has similarly found that an
underground detonation of a 5 kiloton weapon near a city
such as Damascus or Baghdad, could cause over 200,000
fatalities, with a slightly higher figure of additional
casualties growing over the following two years.
In order to pursue such "clean" and "contained"
nuclear weaponry, Congress had lifted a ban on research
of such low-yield devices that was mandated by a law
named Spratt-Furse. The Defense Authorization bill of
2004 did so in November 2003, repealing Spratt-Furse,
but under the proviso that no more than limited research
be done on any nuclear weapons without explicit
Congressional approval. But the administration began
work on its low-yield nuke program in January 2002,
almost two years prior to Spratt-Furce's repeal.
According to the Bush administration's own
December 31, 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (a classified
document of which excerpts have been made publicly
available), which is the official declaration of US
nuclear weapons policy: "The NNSA [National Nuclear
Security Administration - in charge of nuclear weapons
programs] has initiated a program to energize design
work on advanced concepts [the term applied to the
low-yield nuclear weapons program] at the three design
laboratories." Confirming this, an August 2003 interview
with C Paul Robinson, director of Sandia National
Laboratories (a nuclear weapons research facility),
noted that the "administration gave us the OK to begin
researching about a year ago". But Spratt-Furse was in
force until November 2003.
Nuclear expert Joseph
Cirincione, director for non-proliferation with the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Asia
Times Online: "I think there's a good question about
whether the concept work done under the Nuclear Posture
Review violated the law [Spratt-Furse] or not."
Facts suggest that the administration
contravened the Spratt-Furse Law in what critics term
its blind rush for mini-nukes. But the questions don't
stop there.
In its push for the RNEP, the NNSA
has submitted a five-year budget. The Arms Control
Association's Daryl Kimball told Asia Times Online:
"They do not do this for every weapon system ... it does
make it clear that they intend to move ahead with
development." However, such a decision is, by law, that
of the US Congress, with Congress having thus far only
authorized a study, nothing more.
On March 8,
the CRS pointedly observed in a report: "The FY2005
[budget] request document seems to cast serious doubt on
assertions that RNEP is only a study."
The Bush
administration appears to be in the process of usurping
Congressional authority. However, the implications go
beyond RNEP.
In a January 22 letter to the head
of the NNSA, Linton Brooks, both the ranking Democratic
member, Representative Peter Visclosky, and the
Republican chairman, David Hobson, of the House of
Representatives sub-committee overseeing nuclear weapons
funding, castigated Brooks for alleged
misrepresentations to them. The two sub-committee
leaders accuse Brooks of providing "hollow assurances",
noting his actions lead them to "question the sincerity"
of Brooks' assertions, adding that Brooks' conduct
betrays the "actual intent of the Advanced Concepts work
proposed by the administration".
At issue was a
limitation that had been placed on the Advanced Concepts
proposal, with Hobson and Visclosky both admonishing:
"You are well aware of our reservations about embarking
on significant new nuclear weapons design initiatives
under the advanced concepts proposal."
Brooks
appears to have ignored Congressional limitation,
evidenced by a December 5, 2003 memo to weapons labs.
In his memo, Brooks declared that the labs were
"free to explore a range of technical options ...
without any concern that some ideas could violate a
vague and arbitrary limitation". The memo also urged
weapons design teams to "engage fully with the
Department of Defense", so as to "take advantage of this
opportunity to ensure that we close any gaps that may
have opened in past decades in our understanding of the
possible military applications of atomic energy".
The sub-committee's letter of rebuke pointedly
noted the need for "Congressional review" before
proceeding, expressing particular concern that Brooks'
memo conveyed to the weapons labs nothing more than
"unbridled enthusiasm for new weapons designs and for
seeking new military missions for nuclear weapons".
As Global Security's Pike observed: "They have
believed for a long time that nuclear weapons are the
answer, and we have just got to figure out what the
question is." And the facts do suggest this is the
mindset dominating an administration in an arms race
with itself, forecasting a "war on terror" "quite
possibly measured in decades" in order to legitimize its
position.
"The script they're reading from is
right out of 1984 ... the perpetual war on the distant
frontier," said the NRDC's Christopher Paine, a man
who's forebear had signed America's Declaration of
Independence, creating the United States.
TOMORROW - Part 3: Iran, North Korea and
problems of proliferation
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.
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