BUSH BREAKS ANOTHER NUCLEAR PLEDGE
During the Cold War, the USSR pledged not to be first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict with the U.S. and said it would never deploy such weapons at all against non-nuclear states. Washington never agreed to the no-first-use proposition, but nearly a quarter-century ago the Carter administration ruled out the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states under certain conditions.
Today, the Bush administration appears ready to junk even this half-way measure.
President Carter’s position, in the words of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on June 12, 1978, was as follows: “The United States will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty or any comparable internationally binding commitment not to acquire nuclear explosive devices, except in the case of an attack on the U.S., its territories or armed forces or its allies, by such a state allied to a nuclear-weapon state carrying out or sustaining the attack.”
The Clinton administration reaffirmed the 1978 commitment in 1995, and along with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, Russia and China -- all nuclear powers) it became an official United Nations resolution.
But according to the conservative daily The Washington Times, which broke the news Feb. 22 , “the Bush administration is no longer standing by a 24-year-old U.S. pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.”
The paper quoted Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton as saying, “We would do whatever is necessary to defend America’s innocent civilian population .... We are not ruling anything in and we are not ruling anything out.” Referring to the 1978 U.S. declaration, he said, “We are just not into theoretical assertions that other administrations have made.” Suggesting that the 1995 Security Council declaration was based on “an unrealistic view of the international situation,” Bolton continued: “The idea that fine theories of deterrence work against everybody, which is implicit in the negative security assurances, has just been disproven by Sept. 11.”