. . . Or, should there be wiggle room in our stated policy for the possibility of a nuclear first strike against a country which doesn't possess any nuclear weapons at all? A new 'Nuclear Posture Review' is due from the Obama administration. What changes will be made from the last administration's nuclear posture, and what will be left intact? Some background . . .IN September 2000, PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, John Bolton and others. The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that, despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."
The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more." The PNAC document encouraged the military to "develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world."
The paper claimed that, "Potential rivals such as China were anxious to exploit these technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea were rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they sought to dominate. Also that, information and other new technologies as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation were creating a 'dynamic' that might threaten America's ability to exercise its 'dominant' military power."
In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, "In reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself."
"The (Clinton) administration's stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been described by Congress as "erosion by design," the group chided. The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."
In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."
The PNAC 'Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the Bush administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests abroad. It stated that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."
This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that the U.S. "must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."
Their strategy asserted that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack." So their plan was to attack whomever, whenever they felt our security was threatened, no matter if the nature and prevalence of the attack was uncertain.
The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy. President Bush projected a domineering image of the United States around the world which provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to the rape of their lands, their resources and their communities (like in Iraq) as the United States exercised its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction. Our folly evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as they rejected all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer.
Isolation enveloped our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers. Bush unleashed a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which is to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy revealed in our scramble for 'useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.
President Bush signed into law a Defense bill for 2004 which included $9 billion in funding for research on the next generation of nuclear weaponry. "It's an important signal we're sending," he remarked at the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, "because, you see, the war on terror is different than any war America has ever fought."
"Our enemies seek to inflict mass casualties, without fielding mass armies," he cautioned. "They hide in the shadows, and they're often hard to strike. The terrorists are cunning and ruthless and dangerous, as the world saw on September the 11th, 2001. Yet these killers are now facing the United States of America, and a great coalition of responsible nations, and this threat to civilization will be defeated."
However, this is a posture usually reserved for nation-states who initiate or sponsor terrorists. The devastating neighboring effect of a potential nuclear engagement would contaminate innocent millions with the resulting radioactive fallout, and would not deter individuals with no known base of operations.
Yet, the Bush administration, for the first time in our nation's history, contemplated using nuclear weapons on countries which themselves have no nuclear capability, or pose no nuclear threat. "The Bush administration directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, and to build new, smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations," according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The 'secret' report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, 2004 said the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Libya. It said the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, in retaliation for attack with nuclear biological or chemical weapons, or in the event of 'surprising military developments.'
The new National Institute for Public Policy's report, January 2001 report on the "rationale and requirements" for U.S. nuclear forces, signed by then -Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was being used by the U.S. Strategic Command in the preparation of a nuclear war plan. Three members of the study group that produced the NIPP report - National Security Council members Stephen Hadley (then-assistant to Condi Rice), Robert Joseph, and Stephen Cambone, a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy - were directly involved in implementing the Bush nuclear policy. Stephen Hadley co-wrote a National institute for Public Policy paper portraying a nuclear bunker-buster bomb as an ideal weapon against the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons stockpiles of rouge nations such as Iraq. "Under certain circumstances," the report said, "very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries."
As reported by the World Policy Institute, the NIPP's report was used as the model for the Bush administration's
Nuclear Posture Review, which advocated an expansion of the U.S. nuclear "hit list" and the development of a new generation of "usable," lower-yield nuclear weapons. Most observers did not believe, however, that the new weapons can be developed without abandoning the non-proliferation treaty and sparking a new and frightening worldwide nuclear arms race.
-------------------------------------------
The NYT reported today that the Obama administration is beginning to formulate their own
Nuclear Posture Review, and some outlines of their nuclear policy are reportedly beginning to emerge. 'Aides' are said to have told the NYT that President Obama's NPR will be a repudiation of many of his predecessor's nuclear initiatives.
from the article entitled, '
White House Is Rethinking Nuclear Policy' :
Mr. Obama’s new strategy — which would annul or reverse several initiatives by the Bush administration — will be contained in a nearly completed document called the Nuclear Posture Review, which all presidents undertake. Aides said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates will present Mr. Obama with several options on Monday to address unresolved issues in that document, which have been hotly debated within the administration.
Mr. Obama’s decisions on nuclear weapons come as conflicting pressures in his defense policy are intensifying. His critics argue that his embrace of a new movement to eliminate nuclear weapons around the world is naïve and dangerous, especially at a time of new nuclear threats, particularly from Iran and North Korea. But many of his supporters fear that over the past year he has moved too cautiously, and worry that he will retain the existing American policy by leaving open the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack, perhaps against a nation that does not possess a nuclear arsenal.
As described by those officials, the new strategy commits the United States to developing no new nuclear weapons, including the nuclear bunker-busters advocated by the Bush administration. But Mr. Obama has already announced that he will spend billions of dollars more on updating America’s weapons laboratories to assure the reliability of what he intends to be a much smaller arsenal. Increased confidence in the reliability of American weapons, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in a speech in February, would make elimination of “redundant” nuclear weapons possible.
“It will be clear in the document that there will be very dramatic reductions — in the thousands — as relates to the stockpile,” according to one senior administration official whom the White House authorized to discuss the issue this weekend. Much of that would come from the retirement of large numbers of weapons now kept in storage.
The article by NYT's David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker reports that the administration has already decided against proposals to make the language regarding use of nuclear weapons more direct and limited to deterrence of a nuclear attack. Spencer Ackerman
comments from The Washington Independent:
When the U.S. faced a nuclear-armed global adversary in the Soviet Union, there was general consensus that ambiguity about whether the U.S. would initiate a nuclear war benefited the greater cause of never fighting one, as the ambiguity created a more robust nuclear deterrent. Now, officials are wondering whether it makes sense to retain that ambiguity or changed global circumstances — and the need to hold the U.S. to the same non-nuclear standard it expects of the rest of the world — merit greater candor.
Some leading Democrats, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have asked Mr. Obama to declare that the “sole purpose” of the country’s nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attack. “We’re under considerable pressure on this one within our own party,” one of Mr. Obama’s national security advisers said recently.
But inside the Pentagon and among many officials in the White House, Mr. Obama has been urged to retain more ambiguous wording — declaring that deterring nuclear attack is the primary purpose of the American arsenal, not the only one. That would leave open the option of using nuclear weapons against foes that might threaten the United States with biological or chemical weapons or transfer nuclear material to terrorists.
All of the nuclear ambitions of the past administration, both in defense and with respect to energy production, were/are a foot in the door for those who would expand our existing nuclear program and would draw our nation into a new nuclear arm's race; exacerbating the problems of proliferation; threatening the safety and the health of workers, the community and the environment. They should be strongly resisted and overturned in this new nuclear review. Stay tuned.
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