http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/071/oped/Bush_s_stealth_policy_on_N_arms+.shtml
Bush's Stealth Policy on Nuclear Arms
By Thomas Oliphant, March 12, 2002
WASHINGTON | It is not simply the fresh list of countries that the United States is willing to consider nuking someday.
What is truly significant - as well as stupid, scary, and outrageous - is the almost casual breaking of long-standing policy taboos about the unthinkable and the implications of this cavalier attitude for relations with the rest of the world and for future arms races.
The Russians and Chinese already know the United States is unilaterally departing from the 1972 treaty effectively banning missile defense systems. Now the world has reason to doubt the American commitment to the 1974 treaty to guard against nuclear proliferation as well as the honesty and good will of Bush administration "pledges" to cut back our post-Cold War nuclear arsenal and to maintain a moratorium on testing.
The cover story the administration sought to peddle on last weekend's TV talk shows - via Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - is that contingency plans to target Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Russia, and China are more theoretical exercises than serious policy work and that no special notice need be taken.
The cover story is belied by actual intentions as revealed to Congress in a freshly completed Nuclear Posture Review and in the very faint, fine print of the recently unveiled Bush budget. Over the weekend the headline-making list of countries leaked from Capitol Hill, but as part of a leak of the underlying policy document that began four weeks ago.
On Feb. 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council - well-known for its thorough, documented research - put out the first detailed summary of the posture review that had been ordered by Congress in late 2000 and of a special briefing the Defense Department had conducted on the document - without the secret list of countries. At the time, no one really noticed. With the addition of the countries, The Los Angeles Times got noticed. Here's the council's highly critical but accurate summary view four weeks ago:
"Behind the administration's rhetorical mask of post-Cold War restraint lie expansive plans to revitalize US nuclear forces and all the elements that support them, within a so-called "New Triad" of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defenses and nuclear weapons infrastructure."
If the basic purpose of nuclear weapons since the end of World War II had been to prevent their use and proliferation, the deadly serious review by the Bush administration - with the force plans and massive spending as accompaniments - results in a doctrine that contemplates their use and appears indifferent to their proliferation.
Numbers tell a large chunk of the story. When the administration's intention unilaterally to abrogate the ABM treaty was made known, President Bush made much of a supposed intention to reduce its supply of deployed warheads from roughly 8,000 to below 4,000 in 2007 and eventually to between 1,700 and 2,200.
What the posture review actually reveals is a plan to cut "immediate force requirements" for "operationally deployed forces." What's going on here is more a change of terms than in posture, hidden by a new, gobbledygook accounting system that the council properly declared "worthy of Enron."
Behind the clearly visible nuclear inventory, the council found a "huge, hidden arsenal." It included, but no longer "counted," warheads on two Trident submarines being overhauled at all times, as well as 160 more now listed as "spare." It included nearly 5,000 intact warheads now in a status called "inactive reserve," not to mention a few thousand more bombs and cruise missile warheads as part of a new "responsive force." And on top of that there is to be a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium and other components from which thousands more weapons could be assembled quickly. Extrapolating the information, the Defense Council estimated that the United States would have a total of 10,590 warheads at the end of 2006, compared with 10,656 this year.
And there's more. The administration's posture review also discloses plans to greatly expand the nuclear war infrastructure and to prepare for a resumption of testing, in part to make possible a new generation of warheads that could penetrate deep into the ground. The rules of the nuclear road from the US perspective have never included a flat-out promise never to be the first combatant to resort to nuclear war. During the Cold War, the United States was always prepared to go nuclear to stop a massive, conventional attack from the east in Europe, and before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein got a stern message that all bets were off if he used chemical or biological weapons.
But this is different. This is a plan to use nukes in conventional war-fighting and to maintain a Cold War-sized arsenal by stealth and deception. It is disgraceful.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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