Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 8. Juli 2013 / Time Line July 8, 2013
Version 3.007/08/2013
Still Preparing for Nuclear War: The U.S. Government Continues
the Policies of the Past
By Lawrence S.
Wittner
Nearly a quarter century after the disappearance of
the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government
is still getting ready for nuclear war.
This fact was underscored on June 19, 2013, when the Pentagon, on
behalf of President Barack Obama, released a report to Congress
outlining what it called the U.S. government’s “Nuclear
Employment Strategy.” Although the report indicated some
minor alterations in U.S. policy, it exhibited far more continuity
than change.
In 2010, the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review declared
that it would work toward making deterrence of nuclear attack the
“sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons. The 2013
report, however, without any explanation, reported that “we
cannot adopt such a policy today.” Thus, as in the past, the
U.S. government considers itself free to initiate a nuclear attack
on other nations.
In addition, the 2013 “Nuclear Employment Strategy”
continued U.S. government reliance on a “nuclear triad”
of ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles,
submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and
bomber-launched nuclear weapons. Although the need for one or more
legs of this “triad” has been debated since the early
1990s, the 2013 report concluded that “retaining all three
triad legs will best maintain strategic stability.”
The 2013 “Nuclear Employment Strategy” also retained
another controversial aspect of U.S. nuclear policy: counterforce
strategy. Designed to employ U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy an
enemy nation’s nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and
associated installations, counterforce is potentially very
destabilizing, for it provides an incentive to nations caught up in
a crisis to knock out the opponent’s nuclear weapons before
they can be used. And this, in turn, means that nations are more
likely to initiate nuclear war and to desire large numbers of
nuclear weapons to avoid having their weapons totally destroyed by
a preemptive attack. Consequently, as Hans Kristensen of the
Federation of American Scientists has noted, the report’s emphasis on
counterforce “undercuts efforts to reduce the role and
numbers of nuclear weapons.”
Furthermore, despite a growing desire among Western nations to have
the U.S. government remove an estimated 200 nuclear-armed B61
gravity bombs -- weapons dating back to the 1960s -- deployed in
Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, the Pentagon
report made no proposal along these lines. These Cold War relics,
too, remain untouchable.
One shift in emphasis indicated in the “Nuclear Employment
Strategy” is a presidential directive to Pentagon officials
to “reduce the role of `launch under attack.’”
Currently, it is U.S. policy to fire nuclear weapons at an opponent
on short notice if there are signs that a nuclear strike is under
way against the United States or its allies. But this reduction in
the likelihood of sliding into a full-scale nuclear war would be
more reassuring if the President’s directive did not also
command the Pentagon to retain a launch-under-attack capability, in
case the President decided to use it.
But what about Obama’s lofty rhetoric of April 2009, in
Prague, where he stated that the U.S. government was
committed to building a nuclear-weapons-free world? Also,
didn’t he renew that approach in his Berlin speech of June 19, 2013, only hours
before the issuance of the Pentagon’s “Nuclear
Employment Strategy,” when he called for nuclear disarmament
negotiations with the Russians?
Yes, the rhetoric of 2009 was very inspiring, landing Obama a Nobel
Peace Prize and raising hopes around the world that the nuclear
menace was on the verge of extinction. But fairly little came of
it, with the modest exception of the New START Treaty with
Russia.
The Berlin speech, too, was substantially over-rated. Although many
media reports implied that Obama had proposed decreasing the
Russian and American nuclear arsenals by a third, the reality was
that the President suggested his readiness to support a reduction
of “up to” a third of deployed Russian and American
strategic nuclear weapons. Under the New START Treaty, the limit to
the number of these kinds of weapons in each nation is 1,550. Thus,
in reality, Obama announced that he favored an agreement for each
nation to eliminate 1 to 517 of them. From the standpoint of
nuclear disarmers, that reduction would certainly be welcome -- if,
in the face of Republican resistance, it is ever consummated. But,
it should be noted that, at present, the U.S. government possesses
approximately 7,700 nuclear weapons.
Another indication that the Obama administration is in no hurry to
fulfill its promises about building a nuclear weapons-free world is
found in its fiscal 2014 budget proposal to Congress. Here, amid
sharp cuts for a broad variety of programs, there is a proposed 9
percent increase in federal funding for the Energy
Department’s U.S. nuclear weapons activities, including
upgrading nuclear warheads (like the B61 gravity bomb, slated for a
$10 billion makeover) and modernizing nuclear weapons production
facilities.
This administration unwillingness to discard the immensely
dangerous, outdated nuclear policies of the past flies in the face
of public support for abolishing nuclear weapons, whether expressed
in public opinion polls or in the resolutions of mainstream bodies
like the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Conference of
Mayors. But, unless there is a substantial public mobilization to
end the American government’s reliance on nuclear war, it
seems likely that U.S. officials will continue to prepare for
it.
Lawrence S. Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of
History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical
novel about university life, "What’s Going On at
UAardvark?” (Solidarity Press).]
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