Women Take Action on Real Security:
Discussion Guide #7

The Nuclear Posture Review
Reducing Risks: This tragedy requires all Americans to examine carefully the steps our country may now take to reduce the risk of future terrorist attacks.
The US should work cooperatively with the international community through treaties, initiatives and institutions toward global security.
       - From WAND's "Statement on the 9/11 Attacks and the US Response"

PART I - SUMMARY

The Bush administration announced completion of its highly classified Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in January. The NPR outlines the direction of U.S. nuclear weapons policy, including development needs, and an assessment of when, why, and how the U.S. might use nuclear weapons. Leaked excerpts of the report reveal that the NPR calls for facilities to produce new warheads, new uses for nuclear weapons, design of new types of nuclear weapons, and big investments in weapons production.

Of high concern is that the NPR reserves the right to target non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons. Those countries include North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. The report states that by putting those countries on target, we would reduce the likelihood that they would initiate a military offensive against the U.S. or our friends. However, Jayantha Dhanapala, the United Nations Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs, said the NPR's plan "flies in the face of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty undertakings. Under Article VI, one is expected to reduce nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminate them."

Further, in the Carnegie Endowment's Proliferation Program's analysis of the NPR, Joseph Cirincione and Jon Wolfsthal said, "An important fact to note is that nuclear threats made in the past have failed to achieve all of their desired results. Instead threats themselves only served to increase the desire of the targeted countries to acquire nuclear weapons…. When threatened with nuclear attack, it is only logical for a state to seek a deterrent of its own."

NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW - TALKING POINTS

  • Although former U.S. policy specified some contingencies which would allow for the first-use of a nuclear weapon against non-nuclear countries, the 2002 NPR makes nuclear weapons use more likely in three ways: 1) advocating development of "mini-nukes" which will lower the bar of usability to an unprecedented level; 2) expanding the contingencies which the US would use to justify a nuclear attack; and 3) publicly naming seven countries targeted by US weapons. U.S. provisions for first use have always been, and now even more so, a dangerous and provocative approach to national security. Rather than allaying fears of nuclear war, the NPR makes the use of nuclear weapons more likely.

  • Specifically, the NPR specifically states that nuclear weapons can be used against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack, in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or in the event of "surprising military developments." (LA Times, U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms, 3/9/02)

  • In 1994, Congress explicitly forbade the Energy Department from developing and researching low-yield nuclear weapons because they "blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war." (The Nation, April 1, 2002 edition, Relearning to Love the Bomb, by Raffi Khatchadourian)

  • The NPR explicitly discusses rebuilding the infrastructure that would allow for restarting weapons testing and production. This directly contradicts a letter written by five nuclear countries, including the U.S., following an international conference on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in May of 2000, which said, "We reiterate our unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." (emphasis added)

  • In proposing more uses for nuclear weapons, the Bush administration places an unrealistic emphasis on national missile defense (NMD) to protect the U.S. from a nuclear strike. In fact, relying on NMD could actually make us less secure because it does not now, and probably will never, protect the country from a coordinated nuclear attack.

  • The NPR might encourage other countries, including our adversaries, to ignore the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the obligations of the NPT, which could lead to a new nuclear arms race.

Sources: Landmine Survivors Network, International Committee to Ban Landmines, Physicians for Human Rights.

PART II - Articles and Questions for Discussion

Why Nuclear is Not the Answer
The Age (Australia), March 17, 2002
By former UN Ambassador Richard Butler

Questions for Discussion

  1. According to Mr. Butler, what were the three new factors presented in President Bush's statement in his State of the Union address: "I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as the peril grows closer. The USA will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world' most dangerous weapons."

  2. In terms of weapons development, what does the NPR propose?

  3. Compare Mr. Butler's concerns with the letter from the nuclear countries in May 2000 on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. How does the NPR stand up to the treaty's standards?

The Nuclear Posture
The Washington Post, March 13, 2002
Editorial

  1. Why is the Bush administration reluctant to destroy the nuclear weapons cut from our current arsenal?

  2. Which prospect makes you feel more secure: dismantling and storing our nuclear weapons, or dismantling and destroying them? Why?

  3. Can you think of a scenario in which a first strike with a nuclear weapon is justified?

  4. Given the administration's plans to develop new weapons and perhaps use them, how protected do you feel by the national missile defense project?

PART III - RESOURCES

Global Security
www.globalsecurity.org 		United Nations
www.un.org
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/ 		Union of Concerned Scientists
www.ucsusa.org/arms/npr.html
Council for a Livable World
www.clw.org 		Western States Legal Foundation
www.wslfweb.org
WAND Resource Page on the Nuclear Posture Review
www.wand.org/news/npr.html

PART IV - Action on the Nuclear Posture Review

Now is a perfect time to call your members of Congress to express your opinion of the Bush administration's nuclear posture review. Congress is due for a recess from March 23rd to April 7th, which means that your congressional delegations will be in their district offices. Consider the following actions for the recess, keeping in mind that emails, faxes and phone calls are preferable over regular mail.

  1. Call your members of Congress before the beginning of the March-April recess. Express your concern over the offensive stance taken by the NPR and encourage your representatives to protest the NPR and re-evaluate the direction the administration is leading us toward in our nuclear weapons development.

  2. Call, fax, or email your local Congressional district offices over the recess. Ask for a meeting with your representatives, or, if they are not available, with their staff. Attend town hall meetings scheduled by your district office. Express your concern directly.

  3. Visit WAND's webpage to review our Statement on the NPR. It can be found at www.wand.org. Write a letter-to-the-editor using points made in the statement and submit to your local newspapers or media of choice. Please send us a copy of your letter if it's published.

The Nuclear Posture
Washington Post Editorial, March 13, 2002

RECENT REPORTS about the Bush administration's review of U.S. nuclear weapons strategy have tended to obscure the fact that much of what the administration laid out in the congressionally mandated report isn't new. For more than a decade, the United States has sought to deter rogue states from using weapons of mass destruction by publicly suggesting that it might respond with a nuclear strike, and Pentagon planners have backed the threat by laying out theoretical targeting plans for Iraq, Iran and other such states. The policy, which the Clinton administration continued from the first Bush presidency, has been a success: Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons against his own people in the 1980s, did not dare to employ them against U.S. troops or allies during or after the Persian Gulf War. You wouldn't know it from recent scaremongering headlines and overheated rhetoric, but in this aspect the Bush review has merely reaffirmed a sensible strategy.

Other aspects of the strategic review, however, raise questions that merit congressional scrutiny. When the review was completed in January, the administration trumpeted its own headline: a reduction of operational and deployed U.S. nuclear warheads from the current total of 6,000 to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next 10 years. Again, there was less news here than it may have seemed; the Clinton administration arrived at a similar figure in formulating its proposal for nuclear reductions. But while the previous administration described its proposed force as meant to deter a possible Russian threat, the Bush administration insists that Russia does not enter into its calculations. The 2,000-warhead figure, say President Bush's planners, was arrived at by estimating only the force needed to deter rogue states and to dissuade China from contemplating a nuclear buildup that would put it on a par with the United States. While that effort to move strategic thinking beyond the Cold War is admirable, the conclusions don't appear to match the new theory: Two thousand active warheads seems more than necessary to deter Iraq or counter China, while the fact that the figure matches that previously deemed necessary for Russia seems an odd coincidence. If deterrence of Russia were really not needed, then a larger number of weapons could probably be deactivated.

In fact, the Bush plan does call for a hedge against the possibility that a hostile government will regain power in Moscow. But because the 2,000 warheads supposedly don't serve this purpose, the administration argues that it must preserve the warheads it takes off weapons during the planned reduction, thus allowing for a relatively quick buildback to a force of 4,600 warheads. Like some U.S. critics, Russia is loudly objecting to this plan; administration officials reply that previous arms control agreements have not provided for warhead destruction, and that any deal mandating destruction would favor Russia, which unlike the United States has preserved the ability to mass-manufacture new warheads. The administration should be pressed to weigh such arguments against the benefits of guaranteeing the destruction of thousands of Russian nukes -- and the risks of leaving such weapons intact when their vulnerability to accidents or theft is the subject of well-justified alarms.

Administration officials say their new strategy will ultimately decrease U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons, because they will develop "new capabilities," such as high-tech conventional weapons and missile defenses, to counter weapons of mass destruction. That is a promising scenario, but it is undermined by another old idea: the development of new nuclear weapons, including low-yield warheads that could be aimed at smaller targets or deeply buried bunkers. The administration's plan to develop designs for such arms over the next three years is troubling; the presence of such weapons in the U.S. arsenal could dangerously lower the threshold for launching a nuclear attack, while inviting a new arms race among existing and aspiring nuclear powers. The Bush administration is right to focus more of its strategic planning on deterring rogue states; but developing new nuclear weapons for that threat is neither necessary nor sensible.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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