Confronted with strong opposition from
disarmament groups and from Congress, the Bush
administration has abandoned its plan to develop a
nuclear "bunker buster".
This new weapon,
formally known as the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrator, became the symbol of the Bush
administration's aggressive nuclear stance. The
administration alleged that the bunker buster was
necessary to destroy deeply buried and hardened
enemy targets, and that - thanks to the fact that
it would explode underground - it would produce
minimal collateral damage. But critics charged
that, with more than 70 times the destructive
power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, a
single bunker buster might kill millions of
people. This contention was
reinforced by an April report
from a National Academy of Sciences panel, which
claimed that such a device, exploded underground,
would likely cause the same number of casualties
as a weapon of comparable power exploded on the
earth's surface.
In addition, building the
weapon symbolized the Bush administration's
flouting of the US government's commitments to
nuclear arms control and disarmament. Under the
terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) of 1968, the nuclear powers - including the
United States - agreed to move toward elimination
of their own nuclear arsenals. And, in fact, after
much hesitation, this is what they began to do
through treaties and unilateral action over the
ensuing years. Therefore, it came as a shock to
the arms control community when the Bush
administration pulled out of the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia,
opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty and pressed Congress for funding to build
new nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes" and
bunker busters.
Given the symbolic,
high-profile status of the bunker buster, groups
such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, the
Council for a Livable World, the Friends Committee
on National Legislation and Peace Action worked
hard to defeat it - mobilizing public opposition
and lobbying fiercely against congressional
funding. Last year, their efforts paid off when
Congress, despite its Republican majority, refused
to support the weapon's development. A key
opponent was Representative David Hobson, the
Republican chair of the House Energy and Water
Appropriations Committee, who insisted that the US
government could hardly expect other nations to
honor their NPT commitments if it ignored its own.
With the Bush administration determined to
secure the new weapon, bunker buster funding came
to the fore again this year. Debate on the
proposal was intense. US Senator Dianne Feinstein,
a Democrat from California, insisted that building
the bunker buster "sends the wrong signals to the
rest of the world by reopening the nuclear door
and beginning the testing and development of a new
generation of nuclear weapons". Ultimately, both
the Senate and the House rejected the
administration measure. The administration's only
remaining hope lay in pushing through a
scaled-back version of its plan, for $4 million.
Championed by US Senator Pete Domenici, a
Republican from New Mexico and long an avid
supporter of nuclear weapons development in his
home state, the bill passed the Senate but was
again blocked in the House, where Hobson once more
led the way. In recent months, a House-Senate
conference committee has grappled with the
legislation without making a decision on it.
Finally, on October 25, Domenici pulled
the plug on the funding proposal, announcing that
it was being dropped at the request of the Energy
Department. An administration official explained
that a decision had been made to concentrate on a
non-nuclear bunker buster. Naturally, the arms
control and disarmament community was overjoyed.
According to Stephen Young, a senior analyst with
the Union of Concerned Scientists, "this is a true
victory for a more rational nuclear policy".
Although the reason for the administration's
abandonment of its new nuclear weapon program
remains unclear, it does appear that it resulted
from public pressure, Democratic opposition, and a
division on the issue among Republicans.
Of course, much more has to be done before
the world is safe from the nuclear menace. Some
30,000 nuclear weapons remain in existence, with
about 10,000 of them in the hands of the US
government.
But the story of the bunker
buster's defeat illustrates that, even in
relatively unpromising circumstances, it is
possible to rein in the nuclear ambitions of
government officials.
Lawrence S
Wittner is professor of history at the State
University of New York, Albany. His latest book is
Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the
World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the
Present.
