More than 15 years since the end of the
Cold War initiated a new era finally making major
advances in nuclear disarmament possible, the
administration of President George W Bush is
proceeding with a radical plan to design new
nuclear weapons and rebuild the US nuclear-weapons
complex.
This plan - known as Complex 2030
- may come under increased congressional scrutiny
with the new Democratic majority in place this
year, but activists and concerned citizens need to
become familiar with Complex 2030 now to equip
themselves to oppose
intelligently yet another
misguided Bush administration policy.
President Bush has proved willing to
reverse the positive steps toward post-Cold War
disarmament his father's administration set in
motion. After the last US nuclear test in
September 1992, then-president George H W Bush
instituted a US testing moratorium that resulted
in other nuclear-weapons states abandoning testing
as well.
This was followed by president
Bill Clinton's substantial disarmament efforts
from 1992 to 1997, a period when the US withdrew
nuclear weapons from 10 domestic states and
several European bases and reduced the overall
size of the US stockpile from 18,290 to 12,500
warheads.
In the waning years of the
Clinton administration and throughout George W
Bush's time in office, however, nuclear
disarmament has slowed to a snail's pace. The US
stockpile was reduced by only 2,500 warheads (to
the present total of about 10,000) from 1997 to
2007, and fewer than 100 inactive warheads are
dismantled annually today, compared with the
1,000-1,500 eliminated each year during the 1990s.
Although the 2002 Treaty of Moscow (also
known as the Strategic Offensive Reductions
Treaty, or SORT) between the US and Russia
stipulates that both countries reduce their number
of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between
1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, the treaty has an
ambiguous counting procedure, fails to adopt
explicit verification mechanisms from previous
agreements, and doesn't even address delivery
vehicles, reserve stockpiles or short-range
tactical nuclear weapons.
The US currently
deploys about 5,400 strategic warheads, a long way
from its ultimate SORT pledge, and recent Russian
overtures to negotiate further reductions have
been labeled ill-timed and insincere by Bush
administration officials.
Since
US-deployed strategic nuclear weapons - even if
reduced to SORT-mandated levels - clearly satisfy
any and all security obligations, why does the US
continue to retain about 4,225 warheads in its
reserve stockpile?
The short answer is
that pro-nuclear analysts argue that the US must
have a substantial "hedge" in case any deployed
warheads ever malfunction or the US is confronted
with a renewed existential threat such as a
resurgent Russia or a confrontational China.
Advocates of nuclear disarmament, on the
other hand, counter that the US should fulfill its
promises under the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), which stipulates in Article VI that
nuclear-weapon states end the arms race and begin
disarmament "at an early date". Anti-nuclear
analysts argue that US policy, especially its
Complex 2030 plan, strengthens the nuclear
ambitions of such states as Iran and North Korea.
The case that they should give up these
ambitions is harder to make when nuclear-weapon
states such as the US consistently demonstrate "do
as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy by invoking the
NPT to prevent new countries from acquiring
nuclear weapons but conveniently forgetting that
the NPT also requires them to disarm.
The genesis of Complex 2030 The
easiest path to a sharp reduction in the US
nuclear stockpile has been completely ignored by
the Bush administration. If the US simply
reconfigured its outdated nuclear-targeting
doctrine - which is based on Cold War-era
requirements for massive retaliation against
thousands of military, industrial and population
centers in Russia, China, and elsewhere - the need
for such large numbers of both deployed and
reserve nuclear weapons would be eliminated
without undermining necessary deterrence
calculations.
Bush has instead taken a
completely illogical approach: he wants to reduce
the US nuclear stockpile by building more
nuclear weapons. Under the aegis of the National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a
semi-autonomous agency within the Department of
Energy responsible for overseeing the
nuclear-weapons complex, the US is on the brink of
producing new nuclear weapons and rebuilding the
supporting infrastructure via Complex 2030.
In a preliminary Notice of Intent (NoI)
issued last October 19, the NNSA presented four
central proposals as part of its Complex 2030
planning scenario:
Select a site for construction of a
consolidated national plutonium center.
Consolidate plutonium and highly enriched
uranium (HEU) within each of the eight
pre-existing facilities and reduce the overall
number of facilities containing plutonium and HEU.
Consolidate, relocate or eliminate duplicative
facilities and programs.
Accelerate activities for nuclear-weapons
dismantlement.
Aware that this full slate
of proposals might not be well received -
especially when you consider the sticker shock of
a Government Accountability Office-estimated
initial cost of US$150 billion - the NNSA
presented two alternatives for consideration
during the Complex 2030 public scoping period,
which ran from October 19, 2006, to January 17,
2007.
The "No Action" alternative would
maintain the stockpile status quo but permit
already scheduled upgrades to proceed that could
potentially lead to greater weapons-production
capabilities at several nuclear facilities. These
upgrades fail to address lingering environmental
and human-health concerns from Cold War-era
production.
The second alternative,
"Reduced Operations", doesn't include a
consolidated national plutonium facility like the
full Complex 2030 proposal but could still
substantially increase current bomb-making
capabilities by establishing "a basic capability
for manufacturing technologies for all stockpile
locations", a condition that doesn't currently
exist.
Besides these massive changes to
the stockpile infrastructure, another
controversial program that has become part of the
overarching Complex 2030 vision is the reliable
replacement warhead (RRW) program. Originally
introduced in the fiscal-2005 Consolidated
Appropriations Bill by Republican Congressman
David Hobson, RRW was vaguely defined as "a
program to improve the reliability, longevity and
certifiability of existing weapons and their
components".
Although Hobson believed the
new program would simply "challenge the skills" of
weapons designers "without developing a new weapon
that would require underground testing", the NNSA
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