THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD PERLE
RESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,
PROLIFERATION, AND FEDERAL SERVICES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 12, 1997
Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to appear before the Subcommittee to
comment on the future of nuclear deterrence. I spent more than a decade
as a member of the staff of this Subcommittee and its predecessors
under the chairmanship of Senator Henry M. Jackson. It was Scoop's view
that this Subcommittee had an important contribution to make to
international security and that it could do this best by exploring the
intellectual underpinnings of our national security policy.
I hope, Mr. Chairman, I may be permitted to digress long enough to
remember a distinguished former staff director of this Subcommittee,
Dorothy Fosdick, who died last week at the age of 83. Dorothy directed
the Subcommittee staff for nearly 20 years and was its guiding force
through hundreds of hearings like this one today. She was a
tremendously energetic, intelligent and conscientious public servant
who fought with skill and tenacity for American strength of purpose and
of arms throughout the Cold War. Happily, she lived to see that titanic
struggle end with the western victory to which she so abundantly
contributed.
One of the issues on which Dorothy--or Dickie as she was known
throughout the Senate--worked long and hard was the subject of today's
hearing, nuclear weapons. I have little doubt that she would have
organized a hearing on today's subject out of a deep concern, which I
share, that the United States not embrace, even as a long term goal,
the objective of eliminating all nuclear weapons.
Mr. Chairman, I have read the joint statement by my friend General
Goodpaster and General Lee Butler. I've known General Goodpaster for
many years and hold him in the highest regard. And while I know General
Butler less well, I certainly credit his intelligence and experience.
So it is despite my personal respect for these men that I disagree
sharply with their advice as to the desirability of eliminating all
nuclear weapons.
They have made the judgment that our security would be enhanced by
the elimination of all nuclear weapons. I believe, on the contrary,
that our security would be profoundly undermined by the elimination of
all nuclear weapons, even if agreements providing for this could be
negotiated and universally ratified.
In the real world there is no serious possibility of an agreement
eliminating all nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. Generals
Goodpaster and Butler seem to recognize this when they say ``. . . the
phased withdrawal and destruction of nuclear weapons from all
countries' arsenals would take many years, probably decades, to
accomplish.''
But elsewhere in their joint statement, the generals acknowledge
that ``No one can say today whether or when this final goal will prove
feasible . . .'' Nevertheless, despite uncertainty about whether the
course they recommend will prove feasible, they urge us to undertake
now a serious commitment to it. I should have thought that embarking on
a policy the feasibility of which cannot be shown is a most doubtful
and risky way to shape our future security.
Before outlining why I think it would be dangerous and unwise to
embrace a goal of admitted uncertain feasibility but certain grave
risks, let me say two things about a second statement with the same
theme, issued by a long list of flag officers from several countries a
day after the Goodpaster-Butler joint statement.
This second statement is longer but no sounder. And unlike the
Goodpaster-Butler statement, which is sincere but debatable, the second
statement is tinged with hypocrisy reminiscent of the statements
emanating from the ``peace'' movement of the Cold War. The ``Statement
on Nuclear Weapons by International Generals and Admirals,'' which
advocates immediate reductions in nuclear weapon stockpiles on the way
to the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons, has been signed,
among others, by a number of very senior retired Russian officers,
including the vice-chairman of the Duma International Affairs Committee
and the chairman of the Duma Defense Committee.
Now, unless I am mistaken, the Duma has thus far refused to ratify
the START II Treaty which calls for significant reductions in the U.S.
and Russian nuclear arsenals--reductions that would leave in place
numbers of weapons the signers of the statement consider ``exceedingly
large.'' I would suggest that General Boris Gromov's time and that of
his colleague General Lev Rokhlin might be profitably used to line up
the votes in their Duma committees necessary to ratify START II rather
than propagating high-sounding declarations about a nuclear-weapons
free world.
Second, while the statement is signed by generals and admirals from
several countries, and appears to derive its authority from the
military credentials of the signers, it is, like the statement from
Generals Goodpaster and Butler, a political rather than a military
utterance reflecting political rather than military judgments. In an
effort to inflate the authority with which their political judgment
will be received, the signers refer to their ``intimate and perhaps
unique knowledge of the present security and insecurity of our
countries and peoples.'' This is followed immediately by a flood of
political judgments about the Cuban missile crisis, various treaties
and U.N. actions, the efficacy and credibility of deterrence, the
likely behavior of rogue states and terrorists, and the like.
I go out of my way to mention this, Mr. Chairman, because officials
responsible for nuclear weapons policy should not accord undue weight
to the opinions of military men when they address topics that are
quintessentially political in nature. This is true in general. It is
doubly true when the stars are not on their uniforms, but in their
eyes.
Mr. Chairman, there are at least five important reasons why we
should reject categorically and unapologetically the argument that the
elimination of all nuclear weapons would be a wise goal for the United
States.
First, there is no way to verify compliance with a treaty banning
all nuclear weapons. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. The weapons are
too small and the space in which they can be hidden too vast to allow
for confident monitoring.
Second, the elimination of our last remaining nuclear weapon, in
light of the near certainty that others would cheat and hold some
weapons back, would be an act of supreme folly. For what possible
benefit would we be wise to take such a huge risk? If one or more
nations did cheat we would, by a single wildly imprudent act, place
this country in grave peril. No President, no prime minister, and
certainly no dictator would ever do such a thing. Every state able to
do so would cheat. But we--perhaps alone--would not. The United States
would not undertake solemn treaty obligations, equal in force to the
supreme law of our land, while secretly carrying out violations. The
actual, real world result would be the unilateral nuclear disarmament
of the United States.
Ask yourself, would the eighteen general officers from Russia who
have signed the statement accept that the United States, China, France,
the United Kingdom, India, Israel and whoever else has nuclear weapons
at the time would all turn over their last remaining weapon? And if
they would not, how would they seek to hedge against one or more of the
others hiding some of their nuclear weapons? Why, they would hold back
some of their own, of course. Fear of the actions of others would be
quite sufficient to cause cheating on a grand scale.
Third, even if the impossible happened and everyone turned in his
last weapon, how long would it be before the continuing technical and
scientific know-how and industrial capacity in the former nuclear-
weapon states was mobilized to re-establish one or more nuclear powers?
If one assumes a future serene world in which sovereign states with
nuclear weapons give them up in confidence that their potential
adversaries have done the same, how dangerous would the weapons be in
the first place? And if the world was still a dangerous place, how
could one safely assume that the weapons would be given up? The point
is you can't separate the meaning and implications of the weapons from
the international political context. It is a common error, especially
on the part of military and arms control professionals, to attribute to
weapons themselves the properties that in fact derive from the
political situation in which they are fielded.
Setting aside the concern that Russian nuclear weapons could fall
into unauthorized hands, are we anything like as concerned today about
thousands of Russian nuclear weapons as we were during the Cold War? Of
course not. Just as Canadians and Mexicans never feared America's vast
arsenal of nuclear weapons because the political context among us was
benign, our concern about Russia's weapons--and presumably their
concern about ours--is sharply, and appropriately, diminished. It is
ironic, Mr. Chairman, that just when things are looking up with the end
of the Cold War, along comes an international group of retired flag
officers prepared to say that nuclear weapons ``represent a clear and
present danger to the very existence of humanity.''
Fourth, the elimination of nuclear weapons, or even a commitment to
eliminate them in the future, would be a major encouragement to
potential proliferators. Consider the daunting challenge faced by a
non-nuclear state today that wishes to acquire nuclear weapons. They
must mobilize very substantial financial and technical resources behind
a clandestine program. If caught--as the Israelis caught the Iraqis in
1981--they may be attacked and their facilities destroyed. If they
succeed, they may wind up with a handful of weapons. These would pose a
serious threat to us and to others, to be sure. But the United States
possesses many thousands of such weapons and other nuclear weapon
states have thousands or hundreds. Surely a state with a handful of
nuclear weapons would take seriously the substantial nuclear arsenals
of the major nuclear powers.
Now imagine that we and others are about to give up our last
remaining nuclear weapons, or that we have committed to do so in the
future. The mere handful that a successful proliferator might manage to
acquire suddenly looks like an arsenal bestowing Great Power status. Is
that a situation we would wish to create?
I know it is popular to argue that the disarmament of the main
nuclear powers is essential to discourage proliferation. I think the
truth is just the opposite. Does anyone seriously believe the Indians
would not have developed nuclear weapons if the United States had been
committed to total nuclear disarmament? Or that the Pakistanis would
forebear if we, with or without the Indians, promised to eliminate all
nuclear weapons. Our possession of nuclear weapons does far more to
discourage proliferation than to encourage it since it reassures our
friends and allies that the protection we afford them is ultimately
backed up by nuclear weapons.
Fifth, the elimination of all nuclear weapons would end our
possession of a deterrent force that has contributed significantly to
the peace among nuclear powers that has prevailed since World War II.
It is certainly true that the Cold War gave rise to tensions and
disputes that might well have led to war between East and West. That no
such war occurred is a result of the delicate balance of power that
prevailed among nuclear weapon states. At crucial periods during the
Cold War our nuclear deterrent served to balance Soviet superiority of
conventional forces in a divided Europe. And while conventional weapons
have improved dramatically, and we are less dependent on nuclear
weapons than at any time since their invention, they still exert a
sobering influence that cannot be achieved by any other means.
Mr. Chairman, I happen to believe that the U.S. stockpile of
nuclear weapons is larger than is necessary for deterrence and could be
safely reduced. I would urge that we decommission those nuclear weapons
no longer necessary for deterrence as we develop further the precision
systems capable of military efficacy equal to nuclear weapons. This
seems to me just prudent defense planning, especially since the
credibility of the use of nuclear weapons in situations that can be
handled without them is close to zero.
Even here, though, I would not wish to be understood as endorsing
the admirals and generals when they too call for cutting back on
present and planned stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The reason for
distancing my view from theirs' is the underlying logic of our
respective positions: I want a minimum nuclear force not because
nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous and should be eliminated, but
because they can serve our security interests if they are deployed in
numbers and according to a doctrine that is realistic and carefully
conceived.
As General Butler knows, that is certainly not what we had when he
headed the Strategic Air Command. In place of a deliberate strategy
combining nuclear and non-nuclear weapons in a way that took account of
the credibility and effectiveness of their use, we had a strategic plan
that called for massive retaliation--mutual assured destruction--in
response to a variety of contingencies, many of which would, in the
real world, never have been authorized. Even the major war scenarios
entailed the use of nuclear weapons on a scale that was wholly
incredible. I believe that what we now hear from General is a
distressed reaction to the ludicrous strategy he was sent to Omaha to
superintend. And I hope thoughtful observers will conclude that further
reductions in nuclear arsenals need not be accompanied by an
apocalyptic utopian vision for their total elimination.
Mr. Chairman, I have tried to suggest three things this morning:
That nuclear weapons cannot be safely eliminated now; that they have
served and can continue to serve our security interests if managed
properly; and that the goal of eliminating them entirely in some
distant hazy utopia is dangerous and unwise. If I might add a fourth it
is to endorse the urgent need to proceed with the development of a
defense against ballistic missiles, an idea that arises directly out of
the concerns expressed in the statement of admirals and generals, but
is, curiously, wholly absent from their considerations.
I once had occasion privately to discuss the idea of eliminating
all nuclear weapons with President Reagan. I said I thought the Soviets
would cheat, and probably others as well. ``So do I,'' he said.
``That's why it could be done only after we had a fully effective SDI
in place.''
Until then, Mr. Chairman, let's not rush to embrace goals that
would make sense in a world that does not exist.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
