NEW NUCLEAR THREATS

Commander Robert Green considers increasing mistrust and global insecurity throughnuclear threats made by the US and UK against several countries; the withdrawalof the US from arms reduction treaties; and US and UK plans to modernise nuclearweapons. Such strategies are an incitement to a nuclear arms race. Renewedefforts to abolish nuclear weapons are needed to rid the world of the threat ofnuclear warfare.

US Doubts aboutNuclear Deterrence

George W. Bush’s inauguration as US President in January 2001 heralded a major shift in USnuclear deterrence doctrine.

In April 2001, a Washington Post article titled “US Studies Developing New Nuclear Bomb,” reported that the Pentagon would report to the Senate in July 2001 tofind a way of destroying “hardened and deeply buried targets.” The desire forsuch a capability was driven by the realisation, as US Defense Secretary DonaldRumsfeld’s senior adviser told the Washington Post, that President SaddamHussein would not be deterred by any of the nuclear warheads in the US arsenal,“because he knows a US president would not drop a 100-kiloton bomb on Baghdad”in order to counter Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Following thefirst Gulf War in 1991, several leading US experts on nuclear weaponsreassessed the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence, especially against threatsby “rogue” states with WMD-armed ballistic missiles. During that war, Israel hadbecome the first state with nuclear weapons to be directly attacked withballistic missiles, experiencing 39 Scud attacks, some against its secondlargest city, Tel Aviv. For several weeks Israelis wearing gas masks hadsheltered in basements, because it was known that a chemical warhead had beendeveloped for Iraq’s Scud missile. Saddam Hussein had demonstrated thathe was not deterred by Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

Later, the Westernnuclear-armed coalition was further shocked to find that instead Saddam hadbeen provoked by Israel’s clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons – condonedby the coalition – to follow suit, despite Iraq being a signatory to the nuclearNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a 1991 article in the US journal StrategicAffairs - “Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed Tyrant”- LosAlamos National Laboratory nuclear weapon analysts Thomas Dowler and JosephHoward II argued that the US had no proportionate response to a “rogue” dictatorwho uses chemical or biological weapons against US troops.1

Nine years later,the consequent risk of “self-deterrence” was also a supporting theme in aninfluential paper, Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century,published in June 2000 by Stephen Younger, Associate Laboratory Director forNuclear Weapons at Los Alamos.2 In it, he challenged decades of military thinking by suggesting thatprecision-guided conventional munitions could replace nuclear warheads on mostUS strategic missiles. Because of improvements in accuracy, “advancedconventional weapons delivered by ballistic or cruise missiles could defeat many[military sites] that are presently targeted by nuclear weapons,” such as mobilemissiles and manufacturing sites for chemical and biological weapons. However,no doubt concerned that he might be arguing away his job, he recommended thatthe US should consider developing a new generation of “small” nuclear weapons tohandle the few military tasks for which he claimed nuclear weapons areindispensable.

President Bush,speaking at the US National Defense University on 1 May 2001, showed he wassympathetic to these ideas when he called for deep cuts in the US nuclearstockpile, along with development of a still unproven ballistic missile defencesystem. In some ways, this was a revived response to what Ronald Reagan had seenas the unacceptable and immoral prospect of relying forever on Mutually AssuredDestruction (MAD) for US security. What had changed since the “Star Wars” erawas that Bush had accepted the experts’ potentially heretical thesis.

He became thefirst US President publicly to doubt that nuclear deterrence would work againstwhat he now saw as the greatest threat to Americans: extremists armed with WMDwarheads intent on blackmailing the US. Moreover, both his Vice-President DickCheney and Secretary of State General Colin Powell were known to have rejecteduse of nuclear weapons against Iraqi forces in the first Gulf War.3In the demonology of nuclear deterrence, such perceived lack of faith in one’sown weapons means that any future US nuclear threat in a similar scenario willlack credibility.

The 2002 USNuclear Posture Review

Responding tothese challenges, after a year in office the Bush administration presented a newNuclear Posture Review (NPR) to Congress on 8 January 2002. This establishedthe broad outline of Pentagon planning for US nuclear strategy, force levels andinfrastructure for the next 10 years and beyond. Although the review wassecret, it was leaked to defence analyst William Arkin, who assessed it in the Los Angeles Times on 10 March 2002. These excerpts from Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld’s foreword outline the new US approach to deterrence:

“Firstand foremost, the Nuclear Posture Review puts the Cold War practicesrelated to planning for strategic forces behind us. In the decadesince the collapse of the Soviet Union, planning for the employmentof U.S. nuclear forces has undergone only modest revision,despite the new relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Few changes hadbeen made to the size or composition of the strategicnuclear force beyond those required by the START Treaty. At the sametime, plans and funding for sustaining some critical elements ofthat force have been inadequate.

As a resultof this review, the U.S. will no longer plan, size or sustain itsforces as though Russia presented merely a smaller version of thethreat posed by the former Soviet Union. Following the directionlaid down for U.S. defense planning in theQuadrennial Defense Review,the Nuclear Posture Review shifts planning for America'sstrategic forces from the threat-based approach of the Cold War to acapabilities-based approach. This new approach should provide,over the coming decades, a credible deterrent at the lowestlevel of nuclear weapons consistent with U.S. and allied security...

We haveconcluded that a strategic posture that relies solely on offensivenuclear forces is inappropriate for deterring the potentialadversaries we will face in the 21st century. Terrorists or rogue statesarmed with weapons of mass destruction will likely test America'ssecurity commitments to its allies and friends. In response, wewill need a range of capabilities to assure friend and foe alike ofU.S. resolve. A broader array of capability is needed to dissuadestates from undertaking political, military, or technicalcourses of action that would threaten U.S. and allied security. U.S.forces must pose a credible deterrent to potential adversaries whohave access to modern military technology, including NBC weapons andthe means to deliver them over long distances...”

The “old” Triad comprised apurely nuclear-armed combination of three delivery systems: land-basedintercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), air-launched cruise missiles andfree-fall bombs, and a relatively invulnerable second-strike capability withsubmarine-launched ICBMs.

By “the additionof defenses,” Rumsfeld meant reviving Reagan’s flawed dream of a ballisticmissile defence (BMD) system in both its national and “theatre” (regional)forms. To permit this, on 13 June 2002, the Bush administration withdrew the USunilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which had underpinnedMAD by severely limiting BMD systems to one each around a single keytarget.

Targetingcountries with nuclear weapons

The review citedseven countries that by implication are now targeted with US nuclear weapons:

“North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could beinvolved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies.All have long-standing hostility toward the United States and itssecurity partners; North Korea and Iraq in particular have beenchronic military concerns. All sponsor or harbor terrorists, andall have active WMD and missile programs. Due to thecombination of China's still developing strategic objectives andits ongoing modernization of its nuclear and non- nuclear forces,China is a country that could be involved in an immediate orpotential contingency… 

Russia maintains the most formidable nuclear forces, aside from the UnitedStates, and substantial, if less impressive, conventional capabilities.There now are, however, no ideological sources of conflict withMoscow, as there were during the Cold War. The United States seeks amore cooperative relationship with Russia and a move away from thebalance-of-terror policy framework, which by definition isan expression of mutual distrust and hostility. As a result, a nuclear strike contingency involving Russia, while plausible, isnot expected… Adjusting U.S. immediate nuclear force requirements inrecognition of the changed relationship with Russia is a criticalstep away from the Cold War policy of mutual vulnerabilityand toward more cooperative relations… Russia’s nuclear forcesand programs, nevertheless, remain a concern. Russia facesmany strategic problems around its periphery and its future coursecannot be charted with certainty. U.S. planning must take this intoaccount. In the event that U.S. relations with Russia significantlyworsen in the future, the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear forcelevels and posture.”

Raising the threshold for strategic nuclearweapons use

Through combining ballisticmissile defence with augmented conventional strike systems, the Bushadministration hoped to strengthen conventional deterrence and raise thethreshold for use of strategic nuclear weapons. This initially appeared to be apositive development, what with Bush and Putin signing the Strategic OffensiveReductions Treaty (SORT) and the inauguration of a new NATO-Russia Council inMay 2002.

Unfortunately, Bush’s piecemeal approach withRussia excludes China, the only other nuclear-armed state with superpowerpotential. There are no plans for a NATO-China Council, or for sharing BMDtechnology with China. On the contrary, China correctly perceives current UScollaboration with both Japan and Taiwan to develop theatre ballistic missiledefence systems as undermining MAD by threatening its land-basednuclear-armed ICBMs. It is believed to currently have less than 20. As itmodernises its arsenal of only about 400 nuclear warheads, China will be able touse US theatre BMD plans to justify expanding its nuclear capability. This willinevitably ratchet up India’s, and Pakistan will feel pressured to respond. Thusone long-term consequence of deploying BMD will be to stifle further progress innuclear disarmament, because the US will argue that it can make no morereductions in light of these developments. Russia will feel forced to followsuit.

Inciting a nuclear arms race

Another US response has madenuclear weapon use more likely. The nuclear review recommends using low-yieldnuclear weapons against hardened or deeply buried non-nuclear WMD targets orbunkers where conventional weapons could be ineffective. This might be driven bythe perceived need to restore US credibility in light of the Cheney/Powelldecision to rule out use of nuclear weapons in the 1991 Gulf War. However, thenuclear review is an incitement to nuclear proliferation, as it wouldgut US assurances not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear NPT signatorystates, including the “axis of evil” trio of Iran, Iraq and North Korea plusLibya and Syria. After this became clear, the UK government echoed its“master’s voice” by warning that it too was prepared to use nuclear weapons ifits forces, not just national territory, were subjected to attacks with weaponsof mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the proposedUS-Russian cuts in nuclear warheads in SORT were not what they seemed or shouldbe. The reductions to between 1,700-2,200 on each side by 2012 were no advanceon the third Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START III), guidelines for whichwere agreed in 1997 by Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin to cut numbers to2,000-2,500 by 2007. Progress on negotiating START III had been stymied byNATO’s attack on Kosovo in 1999 followed by enlargement eastwards, and then byUS plans for reviving BMD. SORT has now effectively killed START III.

Having pulled out of the ABMTreaty, the Bush administration is now threatening to do the same with theComprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was the major sweetener for getting thenuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty indefinitely extended in 1995. Thus, thequestion is raised: with Bush having also withdrawn the US from theInternational Criminal Court on 6 May 2002, lengthening his unprecedented trackrecord of rejecting international treaties, can Russia trust the US to honourthe Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty?

An indicator of Russia’sunderstandable response was a report on 20 August 2002 announcing a radical planto overhaul 144 of its most powerful nuclear-armed Satan ICBMs destined fordismantling under START II. Instead of being dismantled by 2007, they will bekept fully operational until 2014 - two years after SORT is due to expire. Thisis despite ratification of START II by both the US and Russia. START II appearsto have become the next casualty of US “rogue” behaviour over treaties.

When Bush and Putin signed SORT no mention wasmade about standing down the 2,000 nuclear warheads on each side still held atminutes’ launch notice, an enduring legacy of the dogma of nuclear deterrence.This was despiteBush’salleged determination to transform the US relationship with Russia and to“replace Mutual Assured Destruction with Mutual Cooperation,” and Russia’sdegraded early warning system following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

The Bush doctrine ofpre-emptive military action

On 11 September 2001,hijacked airliners were flown into New York’s World Trade Center and thePentagon in Washington DC. Partly as a response to these terror attacks directedagainst the heart of US economic and military power, President Bush submitted toCongress a new National Security Strategy just over a year later on 20 September2002. This is based on a controversial doctrine of “pre-emptive” militaryaction to counter proven, emerging or potential threats to US national securityin an age of international terrorism that might involve weapons of massdestruction.

The justification for such abelligerent stance, euphemistically described by US administration officials as“anticipatory self-defence,” was driven by the recognition that nucleardeterrence is irrelevant against such a threat:

“Traditional concepts ofdeterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whoseavowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents;whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose mostpotent protection is statelessness.”

Setting the new nuclearagenda

Vice President Dick Cheneyhad provided his own rationale in a speech on 10 June 2002: “During the Cold Warwe were able to manage the threats with arms control agreements and a policy ofdeterrence... We [now] have enemies with nothing to defend. A group like alQaeda cannot be deterred…” Linked to plans by the Bush administration to developnew low-yield nuclear weapons for use against hardened or deeply buried targets,this Bush doctrine of pre-emption may have sounded the death-knell of nucleardeterrence.

In an effort toshore up its nuclear posture in relation to Iraq, the Bush administrationreleased last December a six-page National Strategy to Combat Weapons of MassDestruction.4It set out the practical ramifications of both the new US nuclear posture andnational security strategy. It broke with 50 years of US counter-proliferationpolicy by authorising pre-emptive strikes on states and terrorist groups closeto acquiring WMD or their long-range delivery systems.

Reserving the“right” to use nuclear weapons

The statementdeliberately implied the possible use of nuclear weapons: “The United States willcontinue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelmingforce - including through resort to all of our options - to the use of WMDagainst the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”This signalled to the world that the US was increasing its reliance on nuclearweapons, while at the same time urging other countries to give up or foregothem. This undercut the Non-Proliferation Treaty to the point of incitingnuclear proliferation – which has been understood by Iraq, North Korea and Iranever since Bush singled them out as the “axis of evil” in his State of the Unionaddress in January 2002.

In the Los Angeles Times of 26 January2003, veteran nuclear analyst William Arkin revealed that leaked Pentagondocuments showed plans for the possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Oneimplication was that an Iraqi attack with crude chemical weapons that killed,say, about 100 US troops could expect nuclear retaliation. This would kill ormaim hundreds of thousands of non-combatants and make a vast area uninhabitablefor years. The other scenario involved attacking Saddam Hussein’s deepest andhardest command bunkers. Many of these were in highly populated urban areas. Thedouble standards involved are staggering: not least, that part of the USstrategy to combat weapons of mass destruction is to use its own ones. Thisplan provides an example to undeterrable opponents to use their’s too.

The history of the nucleararms race demonstrates that, as long as some states insist on nuclear weaponsfor their security and prestige while trying to deny them to others, thoseothers will follow. The UK, as the first medium-sized state with delusions ofgrandeur, was the overt role model for Saddam Hussein – though Israel’s covert,condoned acquisition of over 200 nuclear weapons provided the regional pretext.In South Asia, bitter rivals India and Pakistan naively attempted to applynuclear deterrence dogma to their security problems. They were also motivatedby the former colonial power’s example.

Reject state-sponsored nuclearterrorism

The reality is that nucleardeterrence is about threatening the most indiscriminate violence possible,unrestrained by morality or the law. It is therefore the antithesis ofmaintaining international peace and security. This is why state-sponsorednuclear terrorism must be rejected and outlawed.

The nuclear apartheid system enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)is imperilled by explicit US threats - parroted by the UK - to use nuclearweapons, even pre-emptively, against non-nuclear signatory states like Iraq,North Korea and Iran. Such threats incite proliferation, and are ultimatelyself-defeating. At the same time, the IAEA inspectors in Iraq had found noevidence of a revived nuclear weapon capability when they left before US, UK andAustralian armed forces invaded on 20 March 2003. Moreover, the Bulletin ofthe Atomic Scientists reported that the North Korean nuclear threat,especially regarding delivery

vehicles, was exaggerated.5

Meanwhile, the recognised nuclear states clearly have no intention of honouringtheir unequivocal undertaking at the 2000 NPT Review Conference to destroy theirarsenals. In addition to US plans, the UKMinistry ofDefence is investing more than £2bn in a project to enable Britain to produce anew generation of nuclear weapons. A huge modernisation plan for the AtomicWeapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire, will provide scientists withthe capability to design and produce “mini-nukes” or nuclear warheads for cruisemissiles.6

A Silver Lining?

Withboth obstructions to the emergence of a global prohibition on nuclear weapons atrisk – namely, nuclear deterrence and the NPT – there could be a silver liningto the current dark cloud of new nuclear threats. Following the World Court’sadvisory opinion in 1996 confirming that any threat or use of nuclear weaponswould generally be unlawful, a model Nuclear Weapons Convention was drafted byan international team of lawyers, scientists and disarmament experts, andcirculated as a UN discussion document (see www.lcnp.org/mnwc/index.htm). Itoffers a plan to eliminate nuclear weapons in a series of graduated, verifiablesteps on the same lines as the widely-acclaimed Chemical Weapons Convention. Allthat is missing is political will.

There is an interesting historical parallel,with slavery. When the campaign to abolish slavery began in Britain in 1785,slavery was accepted in much the same way as nuclear weapons now are – by theestablishment of a small group of predominantly Western/Northern states andtheir allies. Three of the leading slaving states are now the leading guardiansof nuclear deterrence dogma: the US, UK and France.

Pro-nuclear advocates argue that nuclear weaponsare a “necessary evil,” “cost-effective,” “not against the law,” and anyway“there is no alternative.” These were the slavers’ arguments. They were out-manoeuvredby a small group of committed campaigners, who surprisingly focused on theillegality of slavery – not just its cruelty. For the first time, the law andpublic opinion were harnessed on a human rights issue. This forced Britishpoliticians to vote against a system which underpinned their wealth.

Can we channel the massive upsurge of anti-warfeeling in the world into a new abolition campaign, to free humankind and theplanet from the terror of threatened nuclear annihilation?

Notes

  1. See Robert W. Nelson, “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons”, The Journal of the Federation ofAmerican Scientists, January/February 2001, Volume 54, Number 1, http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v541/weapons.htm
  2. Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Expert Challenges U.S. Thinking on Warheads”, Washington Post, 24 October 2000.
  3. Colin Powell, A Soldier’s Way (Hutchinson, London, 1995), p324.
  4. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf
  5. “North Korea: Less Than Meets The Eye”, Bulletin of the AtomicScientists March/April 2003, pp38-39.
  6. Richard Norton-Taylor, “MoDplans £2bn nuclear expansion”, The Guardian, 18 June 2002.

*This article is based on a talk given by Commander Green to the Pacific Institute of Resource Management public forum Resource Wars: From the Global Economy to Iraq, Wellington 22 March 2003.Robert Green served in the British Navy from 1962-82. As a Fleet Air ArmObserver (Bombardier Navigator), he flew in Buccaneer carrier-borne nuclearstrike aircraft 1968-72, then in anti-submarine helicopters equipped withnuclear depth-bombs 1972-77. On promotion to Commander, he spent 1978-80 in theMinistry of Defence as Personal Staff Officer to the Assistant Chief of NavalStaff (Policy), who was closely involved in the decision to replace the Polarisforce with Trident. In his final appointment as Staff Officer (Intelligence) toCommander in Chief Fleet, he was responsible for intelligence support forPolaris as well as the rest of the Fleet. Having taken voluntary redundancy in1981, he was released after the Falklands War. The 1991 Gulf War caused him tospeak out against nuclear weapons, and he became UK Chair of the World CourtProject. He is now coordinating the New Zealand Peace Foundation’s Disarmament &Security Centre in Christchurch with his wife Dr Kate Dewes (www.disarmsecure.org).A new US edition of his book, The Naked Nuclear Emperor: Debunking NuclearDeterrence, will be published later this year by the Pamphleteer’s Press.

1 See Robert W. Nelson, “Low-Yield Earth –Penetrating Nuclear Weapons”, The Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, January/February 2001, Volume 54, Number 1,http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v541/weapons.htm

2 Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Expert Challenges U.S. Thinking on Warheads”, Washington Post, 24 October 2000.

3 Colin Powell, A Soldier’s Way (Hutchinson, London, 1995), p324.

4 Seehttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf

5 “North Korea: Less Than Meets The Eye”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March/April 2003, pp38-39.

6 Richard Norton-Taylor, “MoD plans £2bn nuclear expansion”, The Guardian, 18 June 2002.