The article that follows this introduction was published yesterday in the The Washington Post.
Timothy Wilken
Except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first use of Nuclear Weapons has always been an action that the USA has shied away from. But apparently, the times are a changing. The newly announced strategic policy of first use by the United States might seem OK, but only as long as no other nation is capable of using nuclear weapons against the United States.
In world war II, only one of the combatants, America had nuclear weapons, and that combatant had only three or perhaps four. One was used to test the prototype in New Mexico. Two were dropped on Japan, and the fourth one was not used.
The Hiroshima blast destroyed more than 10 sq km (4 sq mi) of the city, completely destroying 68 percent of Hiroshima’s buildings, another 24 percent were damaged. Nearly 130,000 people were killed; more than 60,000 were incinerated almost instantaneously in a tremendous fireball. In Nagasaki one-third of the city was destroyed and nearly 66,000 people were killed. This was in 1945.
Today the five acknowledged nuclear powers possess about 31,000 nuclear warheads.These weapons are much more powerful and can be delivered anywhere on Earth with the touch of a button.
|
Country |
1945 |
1955 |
1965 |
1975 |
1985 |
1995 |
2000 |
|
United States |
2 |
2,280 |
32,400 |
28,100 |
23,500 |
14,000 |
10,500 |
|
Russia/USSR |
0 |
200 |
6,300 |
23,500 |
44,000 |
28,000 |
20,000 |
|
United Kingdom |
0 |
10 |
310 |
350 |
300 |
300 |
185 |
|
France |
0 |
0 |
32 |
188 |
359 |
500 |
450 |
|
China |
0 |
0 |
5 |
185 |
426 |
400 |
450 |
|
Totals |
2 |
2,490 |
39,047 |
52,323 |
68,585 |
43,200 |
31,535 |
Notice that 21,035 of these officially listed weapons are not under control of the United States. And, there are a number of unofficial and unlisted nuclear weapons in the hands of nations outside the Big Five.
India and Pakistan have not “formally” placed their nuclear arsenal on a delivery system. Israel is not listed here, but it is known they have at least 100 weapons. It is rumored that Egypt still has 6 (loaned to it by the Soviet Union during an earlier Egyptian/Israeli War) and never returned. Egypt is even today actively seeking nuclear weapons. (link)
Iraq, Iran and Libya are also actively seeking weapons. And, let us not forget North Korea. And, even Japan has recently hinted that if they chose they could make nuclear weapons in very short order.
Before its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear weapons and enough weapons-grade plutonium and uranium on hand to triple that number. Since then, severe economic distress, rampant crime, and widespread corruption in Russia and other former Soviet countries have fed concerns in the West about loose nukes, underpaid nuclear scientists, and the smuggling of nuclear materials. And security at Russia’s nuclear storage sites remains worrisome; only 40 percent of them are up to U.S. security standards. (link)
This is why I fear that any use of nuclear weapons could open “pandora’s box” and produce very high civilian casualties.
Some of Bush’s advisors have proposed hitting the entire middle east, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria with a nuclear strike all on the same day. Taking out the capitals of all of those nation states simultaneously. This would be the best way to protect the oil. And don’t forget that is why we are there. Another scenario would be get a good conventional war going, and then when Iraq hits Israel, wait for Prime Minister Ariel SHARON to take out the middle east with his 100 nuclear weapons. I think he would be glad to do it. He only needs the justification.
Mike Allen and Barton Gellman
The Washington Post
A Bush administration strategy announced yesterday calls for the preemptive use of military and covert force before an enemy unleashes weapons of mass destruction, and underscores the United States’s willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons for chemical or biological attacks on U.S. soil or against American troops overseas.
The strategy introduces a more aggressive approach to combating weapons of mass destruction, and it comes as the nation prepares for a possible war with Iraq.
A version of the strategy that was released by the White House said the United States will “respond with overwhelming force,” including “all options,” to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies.
However, a classified version of the strategy goes even further: It breaks with 50 years of U.S. counterproliferation efforts by authorizing preemptive strikes on states and terrorist groups that are close to acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the long-range missiles capable of delivering them. The policy aims to prevent the transfer of weapons components or to destroy them before they can be assembled.
In a top-secret appendix, the directive names Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya among the countries that are the central focus of the new U.S. approach. Administration officials said that does not imply that President Bush intends to use military force, covert or overt, in any of those countries. He is determined, they said, to stop transfers of weapons components in or out of their borders.
The policy sets out the practical ramifications of Bush’s doctrine of preemption, contained in a national security strategy released in September, which turns away from the Cold War doctrine based on deterrence and containment. The preemption doctrine favors taking on hostile states before they can strike.
It broadens a warning that was made to Iraq on the eve of the Persian Gulf War of 1991. A letter from President George H.W. Bush promised “the strongest possible response” if Iraq were to use chemical and biological weapons against U.S. and allied troops.
But the new policy is more specific, detailing the consequences of an enemy’s use of weapons of mass destruction. “The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force—including through resort to all of our options—to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies,” the document says.
The timing of the document’s release yesterday sends an unmistakable message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein about the potential consequences of using nonconventional weapons in a future war.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters on the new strategy, said those options include nuclear force. The official said the 1991 letter had its intended effect. “He [Hussein] didn’t cross the line of using chemical or biological weapons,” the official said. “The Iraqis have told us that they interpreted that letter as meaning that the United States would use nuclear weapons, and it was a powerful deterrent.”
In the past, U.S. officials saw some advantage in keeping the world guessing about how the United States would respond to evidence that a country or a terrorist group was hiding weapons of mass destruction deep underground. And Bush administration officials were at pains yesterday to insist that there is nothing new in their formulation.
Under Bush, however, Pentagon officials appear to have taken a step closer to the possible, limited use of nuclear weapons by pursuing new and more usable ones. A review of nuclear policy completed by defense officials a year ago put added emphasis on developing low-yield nuclear weapons that could be used to burrow deep into the earth and destroy underground complexes, including stores of chemical and biological arms. This has raised questions about whether the administration is lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
Officials deny that they are doing so. But they also argue that the strategic calculations necessary for combating terrorism and hostile nations must inherently be different from those used during the Cold War, when deterrence meant simply convincing the Soviets that the United States, if attacked, could and would wipe them out. Against today’s new enemies, the administration has argued, it may be necessary to strike preemptively and with nuclear weapons that would keep fallout to a minimum.
The administration published a broader national security strategy in September, and the preparation of a separate policy on weapons of mass destruction reflects the seriousness with which the administration takes the threat of attacks from rogue states and terrorist organizations. “Every administration seems to come under criticism for not having a strategy,” the official said.
The six-page strategy released by the White House yesterday was a declassified extract of a top secret directive signed by Bush in May after resolving interagency disputes dating to January. It is among the first major policy collaborations of the National Security Council and the new Homeland Security Council, whose chairman is Tom Ridge. The classified version is identified jointly as National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 4.
The new strategy does not repudiate “traditional measures” of diplomacy, multinational arms control agreements and export controls. But in its classified form, and in the interagency process that drafted it, the directive is premised on a view that “traditional nonproliferation has failed, and now we’re going into active interdiction,” according to one participant who spoke without authority from the White House.
Active interdiction, the official said, “is physical—it’s disruption, it’s destruction in any form, whether kinetic or cyber.”
Explaining the new approach, one official gave the hypothetical scenario of a ship using the Philippines as a transshipment point for special weapons to Libya. “We’re going to interdict or destroy or disrupt that shipment or, during the transloading process, it is going to mysteriously disappear,” the official said.
The official spoke as Spanish special forces, with U.S. intelligence support, stopped a North Korean ship bound for Yemen with Scud missiles. In rare cases, previous presidents have mounted preemptive strikes against nonconventional weapons. Those episodes, including the August 1998 missile strike on an alleged Sudanese chemical weapons plant and the bombing of some targets in Iraq four months later, have generally come in retaliation for specific enemy attacks.
Bush hinted at the new approach in a Dec. 11, 2001, speech at the Citadel, speaking of active counterproliferation. By January, a draft of NSPD 17 was circulating in the State Department, the White House, the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies. State Department officials objected to some elements of the new approach but failed to carry the decision. The Homeland Security Office, represented by policy director Richard A. Falkenrath, interjected itself as jointly responsible for managing the consequences of a successful attack on the United States. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to one participant, objected in April to language that he believed commingled military and domestic lines of authority. Bush signed the draft unchanged in May.
The intention, in theory, is not fundamentally new. The Clinton administration’s Presidential Decision Directive 62, “Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas,” had classified language that one former official summarized as: “If you think terrorists will get access to WMD, there is an extremely low threshold that the United States should act” militarily.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company