Clinton decides U.S. could go nuclear against
chemical, biological attackers
Associated Press, 12/07/97 16:35
WASHINGTON (AP) - Turning U.S. nuclear policy toward an emerging
threat, President Clinton has decided the United States will consider using
nuclear weapons against attackers who hit American forces with chemical or
biological weapons.
The policy, made explicit in a classified presidential directive, marks the
administration's first instruction to the Pentagon shaping a nuclear strategy
against the increasingly worrisome possibility that nations such as Iraq might
turn chemical or biological arsenals against U.S. troops.
A senior Clinton administration adviser said Sunday the policy conforms with
two decades of White House statements on the possible ``first use'' of
nuclear weapons. But it adds presidential weight to the emerging concern
about ``rogue states'' that has replaced the nuclear terror of the Cold War.
Approved last month by Clinton, principal elements of the ``Presidential
Decision Directive,'' or PDD, were reported Sunday by The Washington
Post. In many respects, the directive follows long-standing policy on nuclear
weapons, including continued support for the nuclear triad - bombers,
land-based missiles and missile submarines - and basic reliance on nuclear
weapons as a mainstay of national security.
The document breaks new ground by abandoning the concept that the
United States should plan for a protracted nuclear war that it could ``win''
and by allowing nuclear targeters to expand the list of potential targets that
could be struck in China in the unlikely event of war with that nation.
``We felt that the concept of protracted nuclear war never had a great deal
of credibility,'' Robert Bell, a senior member of Clinton's National Security
Council staff, said Sunday in response to reporters' questions. Such a
possibility was outlined in a 1981 Reagan administration directive. ``There
was an anomaly,'' Bell said: ``The president's own guidance to the Strategic
Command ... was unrealizable.''
Senior military officers have been warning that arms reduction agreements no
longer make such a conflict even feasible, let alone winnable. As a result,
Clinton ordered his reassessment last February.
Worries about all-out nuclear war have been replaced by concerns that an
adversary such as Iraq might use chemical or biological weapons against
U.S. forces. As a result, Bell said, the presidential directive discusses in far
greater detail than in past directives responses the United States should have
available.
``The PDD requires a wide range of nuclear retaliatory options, from a
limited strike to a more general nuclear exchange,'' Bell said.
President Carter said in 1978 the United States would not use nuclear
weapons against non-nuclear states unless those states fought in concert with
a nuclear power or defied the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iraq's
suspected defiance of the NPT allowed President Bush's administration to
threaten Saddam Hussein with massive retaliation if the Iraqi president
ordered chemical or biological weapons in the Persian Gulf War.
``That was something that many people took to be a clear nuclear threat,''
Bell said.
In April 1993, early in Clinton's presidency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a
document called JP-3-12, ``Joint Doctrine for Nuclear Operations,'' which
described the use of nuclear weapons in response to attacks involving
``weapons of mass destruction,'' which could include chemical or biological
weapons. The document is available on a Web site maintained by the
Federation of American Scientists, an arms control advocacy group.
``U.S. nuclear capabilities must confront an enemy with risks of unacceptable
damage and disproportionate loss should the enemy choose to introduce
(weapons of mass destruction) in a conflict,'' the 1993 doctrine stated.
In 1995, the United States - along with Britain, China, Russia and France,
the other major nuclear powers - reiterated the Carter administration's
pledge against nuclear strikes on non-nuclear countries. The pledge retained
loopholes that could allow the United States to strike back.
Bell said the 1981 Reagan administration presidential directive on nuclear
weapons policy barely contemplated the kind of chemical or biological
attack from a rogue state that occupies so much of U.S. defense planning
today.
``We needed to be very clear in what we were instructing,'' Bell said.
``There is more discussion of it, more ink, if you will, in this document.''
John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists argued Sunday that the
presidential directive represents a far sharper policy shift than the Clinton
administration would admit. The White House, he said, was bowing to
strategies already set by the military.
``What they are retroactively doing is attempting to realign national policy
with what the operational policy has been for some time,'' Pike said. ``The
colonels and lieutenant colonels figured out what they wanted to do, and
you've just now got the White House catching up with that.''
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