Abstract
“Employing nuclear weapons in a counterproliferation role is almost inconceivable,” said Roland Kruger, head of NATO's Nuclear Policy Section, in an interview last year. “There are major hurdles that must be overcome, things such as the negative security assurances to the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. The threshold for nuclear employment is very, very high and very much driven by public sentiment.”
“Nuclear weapons are a means of deterrence and thus are political weapons,” adds Lt. Col. Hans J. Krueger of the German Air Force, another NATO staffer. “It would be very difficult to get the consensus [of 19 countries] that would be required.”
These candid assessments from a July 2000 air force monograph, “Searching for National Security in an NBC World,” demonstrate the caution that accompanies international control of nuclear weapons, and particularly, of the nuclear trigger.
But apart from NATO, could public sentiment control the nuclear future? I doubt it. Bush and Gore are both committed to undertaking a nuclear posture review, according to statements their campaigns have given to the Arms Control Association. But unlike the review the nuclear constituency produced in 1993 at the end of the Cold War, this time they are prepared. While the public has been fed a steady diet of Wen Ho Lee, loose nukes, the Chinese threat, and proliferation mania, the nuclear interests have been sharpening their arguments for nuclear renewal.
Bureaucratic throw-weight
For the past three to four years, my shelves have been filling up with new “searching for national security” studies. The most influential of these studies is the October 1998 report by the Defense Science Board (DSB) task force on nuclear deterrence. Made up of nuclear insiders, the task force took as its departure Presidential Decision Directive 60, signed in November 1997. That directive, according to the report, “reiterates the importance of robustly underwriting the concept of deterrence and its application to deterring the use of the range of weapons of mass destruction.”
The DSB leaves no stone unturned in assessing what is needed to keep the nuclear force intact:
beginning to plan for a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with production to begin around 2017, just three years ahead of planned Minuteman III retirement;
a new “A” version of the Trident D5 missile, with production to begin in 2015;
development of a new strategic submarine to be deployed about 2025, before the current Ohio-class boats are retired;
a long-range plan for strategic bombers; and
some nuclear-capable Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to replace current dual-capable F-15Es and F-16s.
The air force is already at work on a ballistic missile requirements study for 2020 and beyond, while Space Command is circulating a point paper arguing that the small ICBM, which was canceled in 1991 after two flight tests, could be purchased and placed in Minuteman silos for a mere $33 billion (in 1999 dollars). Meanwhile, the navy has begun evaluating alternatives for a future strategic submarine.
Fill the shopping cart
Lest one think the nuclear advocates are merely talking about replacing obsolete forces, a number of formal “requirements” have also been signed for new weapons. According to the air force, it needs a “hard and deeply buried target defeat capability” (May 9, 1994), an “agent defeat weapon” (August 12, 1994), and a new capability for “holding strategic relocatable targets at risk” (July 24, 1997). A draft requirement for a “prompt global strike capability” (December 1999) also exists. All of these are potential nuclear weapons to be built. Not to be outdone, the DSB also recommends the development of “specialized weapons/tailored effects for our nuclear deterrent in the long term” to attack chemical and biological weapons.
The DSB notes with alarm that “Joint Vision 2010, the guiding vision for U.S. military capabilities in the twenty-first century, barely mentions nuclear forces.” The same is true, says the DSB, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff annual posture statement and the air force's “Global Engagement” document, the vision statement for the next century.
The advocates' solution is a new “Nuclear Deterrence Studies Group,” which they founded in 1999 to encourage “a more profound level of intellectual activity on future concepts of deterrence in a changing deterrent environment.” More throw-weight, they hope, to reopen the production lines and build a new consensus for nuclear renewal.