1. DE-ALERT ARSENALS
Most Americans do not know that both the U.S. and Russia maintain a policy requiring that their nuclear arsenals, including more than 6000 strategic warheads in silos and submarines, remain on a Cold War level of hair-trigger alert, ready to launch on the warning of an attack, with only 15 minutes to decide the fate of the earth.
This posture is a recipe for catastrophe. Numerous accidents have often nearly resulted in full-scale exchanges between the U.S. and Russia. One notable recent example, out of more than a thousand: in 1995, the Russians wrongly interpreted the launch of a Norwegian weather rocket as a U.S. ICBM attack, and came within 5 minutes of ordering a full-scale retaliation. Similar mistakes have been made by the U.S. At various times, the warning systems of the U.S. and Russia have mistaken a flock of geese and the rising moon for a nuclear strike.
The U.S. president could order the de-alerting of our nuclear arsenal. Such
an action would very likely result in a reciprocal action by the Russian President. In 1992 President George Bush unilaterally ordered U.S. nuclear bombers to stand down from alert, and President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated within a week.
2. REDUCE ARSENALS
The United States has a nuclear arsenal of 10,500 nuclear weapons. The Russians have nearly twice as many, with the vast majority undeployed or on reserve. There are more than 31,000 nuclear weapons in the world. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)a bilateral process begun in 1991is now bogged down in the U.S. Congress. It has become cumbersome, slow and dangerous.
Here lies another opportunity for measured, diplomatic unilateral action, as was pointed out by George W. Bush during his campaign for the Presidency. The Russians propose, and are in effect pleading to find a way to lower the numbers of deployed weapons on each side to about 1500 or 1000. That lower number of weaponsstill sufficient to destroy civilization as we know itwould remain a formidable deterrent until reliance upon nuclear weapons is ended. The U.S. should accept the Russian offer.
3. AID RUSSIAN DISMANTLING
The Russian economy is in dire straits. The financial strain has taken its toll on the military, and, as the recent sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk indicates, the Russian nuclear arsenal is in a highly vulnerable condition. The disorder of the Russian military poses a security risk to the United States, especially as structures of command and control weaken, morale declines, early warning equipment deteriorates and rogue and terrorist groups seek to steal or bribe their way to Russian nuclear weapons.
In 1996-7, Senators Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar successfully sponsored legislation to provide financial assistance for the safe dismantling of the Russian weapons marked for retirement by START I. The $400 million appropriated by Congress, however, is inadequate. More funding is necessary and must be provided alongside a reaffirmed U.S. commitment to assist and match Russian disarmament.
4. FISSILE MATERIAL CONTROL
A global inventory of all sources of fissile materials, and a ban on the further production of weapons grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, would greatly enhance the security of the United States and the world by making it very difficult for rogue states and terrorist groups to obtain the materials required to produce nuclear weapons. Such a ban must incorporate strong verification and enforcement measures.
5. COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN
The work of previous U.S. presidents from both parties must be completed by securing the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the U.S. Senate. The U.S. should then take a leadership role in helping bring the treatys worldwide entry into force. Doing so would provide several strategic advantages to the United States, ensure our technological superiority and result in a net gain in national security. If properly managed, our Stockpile Stewardship program (which does not rely on new testing) would enable us to maintain a strong nuclear arsenal during the process of multilateral disarmament. A ratified CTBT would also grant the U.S. access to a global verification system able to detect any nuclear test of militarily significant yields.
6. NO FIRST USE
During the Cold War, the overwhelming conventional superiority of the U.S.S.R. prevented NATO and the United States from pledging not to use nuclear weapons first. It was thought that the only deterrent to a massive Soviet invasion of Europe might be a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
Today, with the United States clear nuclear and conventional superiority world-wide and the absence of a monolithic Soviet threat, a pledge of No First Use is one of the vital first steps to nuclear weapon elimination. Such pledges have already been made to non-nuclear powers; the nuclear powers pledge not to initiate nuclear strikes against each other would increase stability and discourage accidental launch, facilitate the de-alerting of arsenals and strengthen the global norm that nuclear weapons cannot and will not ever be used again. The other nuclear powers are not likely to make such a pledge unless NATOguided by the U.S.does so.
7. TOTAL ELIMINATION
It defies logic to believe that nuclear weapons can exist forever and never again be used, but the question of how to move from low numbers tocomplete elimination has never been fully investigated and considered by the U.S. government. For it to be seriously entertained in the future, the above, security-enhancing steps must be achieved while the goal of nuclear abolition is consistently articulated. Devoid of the context of elimination, these steps become confusing and it is difficult to mobilize public support for them.
The elimination of nuclear weapons is a simple concept to explain: it is a deeply moral and ethical choice supported by the most prominent religious and spiritual leaders; it is a strategic and security imperative supported by prominent U.S. military leaders; and it is a common sense choice endorsed by prominent civilian leaders, powerful business leaders, and more than 80% of the people of the world.
Posted by zack_allen at 01:50 PM
U.S. General Charles Horner, who commanded Allied Forces in the Gulf War declared in 1997 in an address to the War College, “I predict that a nuclear weapon will be exploded on the territory of the U.S. in the next few years.”
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry says, “Its not a question of whether, but of where and when weapons of mass destruction will be used.”
Ambassador Robert Gallucci, who engaged in nuclear weapon negotiations with both Iraq and North Korea, and now is Dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., recently declared that an American city likely will be destroyed by a nuclear weapon within 10 years. He described how and where it could happen:
“One of these days, one of these (rogue) governments fabricates one or two nuclear weapons, and gives them to a terrorist group created for this purpose. The group brings one of these bombs into Baltimore by boat, and drives another one up to Pittsburgh. And then the message comes into the White House. ‘Adjust your policy in the Middle East, or on Tuesday you lose Baltimore, and on Wednesday you lose Pittsburgh.’ Tuesday comes, and we lose Baltimore. What does the U.S. do?”
Posted by zack_allen at 01:42 PM
The Case for Nuclear Abolition
If we fail in our efforts to address nuclear weapons and civilization is destroyed and humanity exterminated, no other issues will matter.
Of all the great issues we confront at the dawn of the new millennium, nuclear weapons still hold the greatest potential for inflicting the greatest harm on all of humankind. The challenge is whether our social practices, our political institutions, and our imagination can match our scientific and technological prowess. Nuclear weapons are the great unfinished business of the Cold War. The threat of deliberate nuclear apocalypse which haunted humanity after 1945a deliberate massive East/West atomic exchange ending in mutual destructionhas indeed virtually disappeared, but the threat of an accidental or unauthorized Russian/U.S. nuclear exchange has actually risen. The threat that some city, somewhere, will be destroyed by a nuclear detonation has increased since the end of the Cold War. We see four dangerous trends emerging:
Nuclear Proliferation. The End of the NPT? After the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan last year, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is in jeopardy. Many NPT signatories share the frustration at what India has long called “permanent nuclear apartheid.” Mexico has already suggested that it may withdraw from the Treaty after three long decades of delay of implementation of the treatys terms. Egypt and Indonesia may well do likewise, and could be candidates to actually commence their own weapon development programs. The consistent refusal of the five nuclear states to comply with their obligation, under NPT Article VI, to move seriously toward abolishing their nuclear arsenals moves us inexorably toward a world with not eight, but many nuclear states. This movement was given an extra push by the recent rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the United States Senate. The Treatys rejection robbed the United States of any moral authority it could have in addressing the world community as a nation committed to disarmament. For many foreign nations the Treatys rejection in the U.S. proved that the United States is interested only in preserving the international nuclear apartheid. The possible repercussions will be cataclysmic unless we take steps to ensure that the United States undoes its mistake.
Nuclear Terrorism. “Theories of deterrence” become meaningless when applied to the most likely form of atomic apocalypse todaynuclear terrorism in a major American city. Terrorists cannot be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation because they provide no clear target for retaliation. Instead, the existence of nuclear arsenals around the worldparticularly in chaotic Russiamakes it more likely that terrorists can obtain and proceed to use nuclear weaponry.
Nuclear Accident. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, was awakened in the middle of the night in 1980, and told that 220 Soviet missiles had been launched against the U.S. One minute before he intended to awaken the Presidentwho would have had seven minutes to decide whether to order the nuclear counterattack called for by U.S. policy under such circumstances then and nowBrzezinski learned it was a false alarm.. President Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night a few years ago and told the U.S. had launched a missile aimed at Moscow. For the first time in history, the Russian briefcase containing the small computer that can be used to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. was opened this was also discovered to be a false alarm just in time to avoid catastrophe.
Nuclear War. We cannot assume that because there may be a low immediate prospect of a deliberate war between major nuclear states, that that possibility has disappeared. In the future, there surely will be a confrontation between nuclear-armed antagonists if these weapons are not abolished. Robert McNamara says: “Many people don’t understand the risk that we can maneuver into a position where these things would be used. They don’t understand the fog of war . It became very clear to me during the Cuban missile crisis that the indefinite combination of human fallibility (which we can never get rid of) and nuclear weapons carries the very high probability of the destruction of nations.” The distinguished Canberra Commission stated that it defies credulity to believe that the world can indefinitely retain thousands of nuclear warheadsor anywithout their being used someday, somewhere. At present there is a dangerous confrontation between two new nuclear nations, India and Pakistan.
It is the U.S. policy, NATO policy, and the policy of all nations possessing nuclear weapons to rely on them to deter nuclear attacks upon them by others. General Lee Butler, who commanded all U.S. nuclear weapons during the latter years of the Cold War, warns that the trouble with deterrence is that if it ever fails, the result will be utter catastrophe: mutual assured destruction. He believes that it is unworthy of the United States and of civilization to base its security upon terror, upon the threat of inflicting a massive genocidal attack on civilians. General Butler declared in Washington on February 2, 1998, at an event arranged by the State of the World Forum:
“Deterrence at best is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator . We cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it.”
The only way to diminish and ultimately end these dangers is for the international community to commit formally and proceed speedily down the road to total abolition.
Posted by zack_allen at 01:35 PM