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U.S. Nuclear Arms Stance Modified by Policy Study

The Bush administration is working to codify the evolution of U.S. strategic nuclear doctrine from the Cold War policy of massive retaliation against the Soviet Union to a more flexible system that warns of a preemptive strike against hostile countries that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.

The policy would give U.S. presidents the option of conducting a preemptive strike with precision-guided conventional bombs or nuclear weapons.

This system, which Pentagon planners call "offensive deterrence," would put an official end to the practice of assigning a set of fixed targets for the U.S. nuclear force, the vast majority of them in the former Soviet Union. It would replace it with a more flexible targeting scheme in which weapons could be aimed at states that threaten or use chemical, nuclear or biological arms against the United States or its allies.

Reflecting the U.S. approach, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told members of the House of Commons in London Wednesday that Britain was prepared to use its nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack.

Details of the U.S. policy are contained in excerpts from the Pentagon's nuclear posture review, which was sent to Congress in January. The review, parts of which remain classified, is aimed at providing a blueprint for developing and using nuclear weapons and will serve as the basis for a new presidential decision directive. The last nuclear posture review was completed in 1994.

"Nuclear weapons will, of course, continue to play a vital role," the new review says. "However, they will be just part of the [offensive strategic force], integrated with new nonnuclear strategic capabilities that strengthen the credibility of our offensive deterrence."

The more flexible targeting system, called "adaptive planning," was first adopted by the Clinton administration after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the past decade, it has slowly replaced the Cold War system under which more than 1,000 U.S. nuclear warheads were assigned fixed targets in Russia.

In 1993, following the Persian Gulf War against Iraq, Gen. Lee Butler, then head of the U.S. Strategic Command, said deterring other countries from using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons required the ability to change targets quickly and that "adaptive planning" was the answer. Butler said, the United States should "consider the employment of both nuclear and conventional weapons."

Butler's view that conventional weapons had to be considered reflected his experience during the Gulf War, when he was part of the Pentagon planning staff that researched a contingency use of nuclear weapons against Iraqi weapons production facilities.

Butler said at a news conference in 1998 that the use of a nuclear weapon against Iraq would destroy America's standing in the Muslim world. "Can you imagine the impact in a part of the world where we worked so assiduously for so many years to build our presence, to build support and credibility, of being the nation that used a nuclear weapon against Arab peoples?" he said.

Reflecting Butler's views, the Strategic Command in the mid-1990s studied nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities in Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, according to declassified documents. It suggested that conventional weapons be included in any contingency plans for attacking the sites.

By spending more than $1 billion during the Clinton administration on computer upgrades, the Strategic Command was able to reduce the time it takes to assign new targets for strategic weapons from months to hours, and in some cases minutes, according to former officials.

The Bush nuclear posture review calls for making the system more flexible. "The desire to shorten the time between identifying a target and having an option available will place significant stress on the nuclear planning process as it currently exists," the review says.

For example, to replace the major attack options against Russian targets that for years governed the role for almost all U.S. warheads on land- and submarine-based nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, the review talks of "immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies."

Immediate contingencies, which require pretargeted weapons, "include an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation [with China] over the status of Taiwan," the review says.

Potential contingencies are "plausible but not immediate dangers" and include situations in which hostile states possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. Unexpected contingencies are likened to the Cuban missile crisis or a change of government in a country that has nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are mentioned in the report as countries having long-standing hostility toward the United States and so "could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies."

Other classified sections of the study also raise questions about the real level of active, ready-for-use U.S. nuclear warheads that will remain available for deployment after reductions proposed by the Bush administration take effect over the next 10 years. The president has said the operational number of warheads would drop by two-thirds from today's level, which has been placed at 6,000 warheads, to 1,700 to 2,200.

However, the posture review puts today's active force at 8,000 warheads and says that by 2012 "approximately 3,000 warheads now in the active stockpile are planned to be transferred to the inactive stockpile or retired." That would leave 5,000 in the active category, far above the number mentioned by the president.

U.S. and Russian officials working on a proposed arms control agreement to be signed at a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May have yet to reach agreement on whether reduced warheads would be stored or destroyed.

Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, said removal of Russia from immediate weapons targeting reduces the possibility of a nuclear exchange between the two countries.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank, noted that one classified paragraph in the nuclear review says that despite the changed relationship with Moscow, "Russia's nuclear forces and programs . . . remain a concern. . . . U.S. planning must take this into account."

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