Financial Times - March 12, 2002
WAR ON TERROR: THE NEXT PHASE Concern greets new US nuclear doctrine Allies are already nervous about the widening war on terrorism, writes Edward Alden By EDWARD ALDEN
For most of the cold war, the US and the Soviet Union largely accepted the doctrine that nuclear weapons were so massively destructive they were good for only one thing: dissuading other countries from using them.
But with the war on terrorism as the focus of current US strategic doctrine, military planners have undertaken a thorough rethink of how and when nuclear weapons might be used in a war against a range of adversaries, such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea and even Syria and Libya.
The conclusions, contained in the administration's nuclear posture review presented to Congress in January, are likely to be unsettling for US allies who are already nervous about the widening war on terrorism.
"This represents a dramatic change in US nuclear policy," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a research group. "This is not business as usual."
Two elements in particular stand out from the study.
First, the Pentagon review calls for development of smaller and more accurate nuclear weapons with special capabilities, for example, for destroying underground bunkers.
Administration officials argue that such a shift would be intended only to strengthen deterrence against so-called rogue states that might be tempted to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush's national security adviser, said the only way to deter the use of such weapons "is to be clear that it would be met with a devastating response".
But the claim that deterrence is the only goal is weakened by the report's other main platform: that the US has broadened the circumstances under which it might be prepared to use nuclear weapons in a war.
In particular, the study indicates the US might use nuclear strikes pre- emptively against countries developing weapons of mass destruction and could also do so in the event of large-scale conventional attacks, such as an Iraqi invasion of Israel or a North Korean invasion of South Korea.
The new doctrine overturns a US policy that dates back to 1978, in which the US first stated publicly it would not use a nuclear strike against any state that did not have its own atomic weapons, unless that state attacked the US in alliance with a nuclear weapon-armed state.
Mr Cirincione argues that the new approach is dangerously provocative by taking away the previous safe harbour offered to states that refrained from building their own nuclear weapons. "If you're Iran and you are now being threatened with a nuclear attack whether or not you've got them, are you better off acquiring nuclear weapons?"
The disclosures throw a different light on testimony by US officials last month on the nuclear posture review, which at the time had only been seen by selected members of Congress.
Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defence for policy, said the administration envisaged using nuclear weapons not only for deterrence but also "for holding at risk highly threatening targets that cannot be addressed by other means". In the future, he said, nuclear weapons would be "integrated with, rather than treated in isolation from, other military capabilities".
The controversy is the second that the administration has faced over the classified nuclear posture review, first presented to Congress in early January.
At the time, the administration was focused on its plan to reduce the overall nuclear arsenal to less than 2,000 warheads but later revealed the warheads would merely be stored rather than destroyed.
* Russia and the US may not have a planned arms reduction deal ready to sign when President George W. Bush visits Russia on May 23, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defence minister, said yesterday, Robert Cottrell reports from Moscow. Talks were "moving fairly slowly", Mr Ivanov said.
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New York Times (editorial) - March 12, 2002
America as Nuclear Rogue
If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations.
The paper, the Nuclear Posture Review, proposes lowering the overall number of nuclear warheads, but widens the circumstances thought to justify a possible nuclear response and expands the list of countries considered potential nuclear targets. It envisions, for example, an American president threatening nuclear retaliation in case of "an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, or a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan."
In a world where numerous countries are developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, it is quite right that America retain a credible nuclear deterrent. Where the Pentagon review goes very wrong is in lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons and in undermining the effectiveness of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The treaty, long America's main tool for discouraging non-nuclear countries from developing nuclear weapons, is backed by promises that as long as signatories stay non-nuclear and avoid combat alongside a nuclear ally, they will not be attacked with nuclear weapons. If the Pentagon proposals become American policy, that promise would be withdrawn and countries could conclude that they have no motive to stay non-nuclear. In fact, they may well decide they need nuclear weapons to avoid nuclear attack.
The review also calls for the United States to develop a new nuclear warhead designed to blow up deep underground bunkers. Adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran.
Since the dawn of the nuclear age, American military planners have had to factor these enormously destructive weapons into their calculations. Their behavior has been tempered by the belief, shared by most thoughtful Americans, that the weapons should be used only when the nation's most basic interest or national survival is at risk, and that the unrestrained use of nuclear weapons in war could end life on earth as we know it. Nuclear weapons are not just another part of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the threshold for their use is reckless folly.