| ARMS TRADE RESOURCE CENTER
RECENT NEWS COVERAGE: March 12, 2001 The Nation Bush’s Nuclear Revival President Bush’s mid-February directive ordering the Pentagon to review and restructure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a wake-up call for supporters of arms control and disarmament. Under the guise of revising U.S. nuclear policy to make it more relevant to the post-Cold War world, the Bush administration is hatching an ambitious scheme to deploy a massive missile defense system and develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. If fully implemented, Bush’s aggressive new policy could provoke a multi-sided nuclear arms race that will make the U.S.-Soviet competition of the Cold War era look tame by comparison. To understand the danger of Bush’s emerging nuclear doctrine, you have to read the fine print. Some elements of Bush’s approach * first outlined at a May 23, 2000 speech at the National Press Club * sound downright sensible. On that occasion, Bush suggested that if elected (or selected) president, he would reduce the nation’s arsenal of nuclear overkill from its current level of 7,500 strategic warheads to 2,500 or less. In parallel with these reductions, which go beyond anything that the Clinton/Gore administration contemplated, Bush also promised to take as many nuclear weapons as possible off of hair trigger alert status, thereby reducing the danger of an accidental launch. So far, so good: fewer nuclear weapons, with fewer on high alert status, would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the plan doesn’t stop there. Bush has also committed himself to deploying, “at the earliest possible date,” a missile defense system capable of defending “all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas.” Unlike the $60 billion Clinton/Gore National Missile Defense scheme involving land-based interceptors based in Alaska and North Dakota, Bush’s enthusiasm for a new Star Wars system knows no limit. The President and his Star-Warrior-in-Chief, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are willing to put missile interceptors on land, at sea, on airplanes, and in outer space in pursuit of continued U.S. military dominance. The cost of Bush’s Star Wars fantasy could be as much as $240 billion over the next two decades, but that’s the least of our problems. According to a National Intelligence Council report released last summer, deployment of an NMD system by the United States is likely to provoke “an unsettling series of political and military ripple effects . . . that would include a sharp buildup of strategic and medium-range nuclear missiles by China, India and Pakistan and the further spread of military technology in the Middle East.” So much for reducing the nuclear danger. Bush’s provocative missile defense scheme may not even be the most dangerous element of his new age nuclear policy. According to Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times, Bush’s renovation of U.S. nuclear doctrine will draw heavily on a January 2001 study by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) that was directed by Dr. Keith Payne, whose main claim to fame is co-authoring a 1980s essay on nuclear war entitled “Victory Is Possible.” Bush National Security Council staffers Robert Joseph and Stephen Hadley were involved in the production of the NIPP study, as was William Schneider, an informal advisor and ideological soul mate of Donald Rumsfeld. The findings of the report would warm the heart of Stanley Kubrick’s fictional nuclear warmonger, Dr. Strangelove. In its most egregious passage, the study advocates the development and design of a new generation of nuclear weapons to be used for both deterrent and “wartime roles,” ranging from “deterring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) use by regional powers,” to “preventing catastrophic losses in a conventional war,” to “providing unique targeting capabilities (deep underground/biological weapons targets),” to “enhancing U.S. influence in crises.” In short, at a time when a number of prominent military leaders such as General Lee Butler, the former head of the Strategic Air Command, have been suggesting the abolition of nuclear weapons on the grounds that they serve no legitimate military purpose, George W. Bush is taking advice from a group of unreformed initiates in the nuclear priesthood who are desperately searching for ways to re-legitimize nuclear weapons. The unifying vision behind the Bush doctrine is nuclear unilateralism, the notion that the United States can and will make its own decisions about the size, composition, and employment of its nuclear arsenal without reference to arms control agreements or the opinions of other nations. It is a disastrous doctrine that raises the odds that nuclear weapons will be used again one day, and as such it demands an immediate and forceful public response. It’s not like we haven’t been down this road before. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan rode into Washington with guns blazing, pressing for a massive nuclear buildup and a Star Wars missile defense system, the international peace movement helped roll back his nightmare nuclear scenarios and push him towards a policy of nuclear arms reductions, not mutual annihilation. It will take that same kind of energy and commitment to stave off Bush’s born again nuclearism. Reprinted with permission from The Nation, March 12, 2001.
|
