15 March 2002
Byliner: Sokolsky and Rumer on Nuclear Alarmists
(Washington Post 03/15/02 Richard D. Sokolsky/Eugene B. Rumer op-ed)
(1260)
(This column is by Richard D. Sokolsky and Eugene B. Rumer, senior
research fellows at the National Defense University's Institute for
National Strategic Studies. This column first appeared in The
Washington Post on March 15, 2002 and is in the public domain. No
republication restrictions.)
Nuclear Alarmists
by Richard D. Sokolsky and Eugene B. Rumer
Arms control advocates are sounding the alarm over recent press
reports about the Bush administration's new nuclear posture review,
which calls for developing nuclear plans and capabilities to deter or
defend against nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attacks not
only by Russia and China but also by Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria
and Libya.
The critics of the nuclear review claim that increasing the number of
instances in which the United States might consider using nuclear
weapons could well make their use more likely and is liable to
stimulate further proliferation of such weapons.
These arguments do not stand up under scrutiny. In fact, the Bush
administration deserves praise for its candor in dealing with the
security dilemmas posed by the post-Cold War strategic environment.
The United States is right to redefine the requirements of deterrence
in order to meet new threats to its security, its forces abroad and
its allies.
Countries hostile to the United States are indeed developing nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons that could do us grave harm. Their
leaders may not be deterred by traditional threats of massive nuclear
retaliation. And they are producing and storing these weapons in
deeply buried and hardened sites that might be invulnerable to all but
nuclear weapons.
Posing a threat to targets that are highly valued by an adversary has
been a staple of U.S. deterrence doctrine since the beginning of the
nuclear age. But leaders of rogue states may not take seriously U.S.
threats to launch massive nuclear strikes on leadership and weapons
sites -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- that are inaccessible
except to the most destructive nuclear weapons in our arsenal: the
types left over from the Cold War. These U.S. weapons, would, of
course, cause a huge loss of innocent lives. Thus, having the
capability to destroy such targets with smaller and less destructive
weapons would strengthen rather than erode deterrence.
It is preposterous to believe, as some scaremongers have suggested,
that the Bush administration is preparing to carry out nuclear
preemptive strikes around the world. But it is not hard to imagine
circumstances under which a president might want to have the nuclear
option available for preventing or responding to a rogue state's use
of highly destructive weapons. Suppose, for example, that the United
States had just suffered the loss of 100,000 lives in a biological
warfare attack, that it not only knew the identity of the rogue state
attacker but also had reliable intelligence it was preparing
additional attacks on U.S. territory -- and that these weapons could
be destroyed only with nuclear weapons. Under these conditions, why
shouldn't the president have the option of limiting further American
deaths?
A key criticism of the nuclear posture review is that it envisions
using nuclear weapons to deter or possibly respond to not only nuclear
threats to the United States but also attacks with chemical and
biological weapons (CBW). Critics point out that during the Cold War,
nuclear weapons were an option of last resort, to be used only to
deter a nuclear attack on the United States by the Soviet Union -- in
other words, only when national survival was at stake.
This interpretation is a misreading of history. Throughout the Cold
War, the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to
deter both conventional and nuclear attacks on its NATO allies and on
Japan, Korea and Australia. The prime example of the United States'
"lowering the threshold" for the use of nuclear weapons was Europe,
where official NATO doctrine called on the alliance to use nuclear
weapons to deter or defeat a conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact
that was also expected to include the use of chemical weapons.
The credible threat to use nuclear weapons to offset the conventional
superiority of the Warsaw Pact helped keep the peace in Europe
throughout the Cold War. Similarly, holding open the option of using
nuclear weapons against chemical or biological attacks may also help
to keep the peace.
The issue is not that, as some critics suggest, nuclear arms are
strictly for deterrence rather than war-fighting -- this is a false
choice. U.S. plans for employing nuclear weapons over the past few
decades have not specifically targeted population centers. These plans
were based on the sound logic that threats work only if they are
credible, and that it was simply incredible to threaten the Soviet
Union with total destruction, and thus put the survival of the United
States at risk, regardless of the nature of the Soviet nuclear attack.
Critics of the nuclear posture review worry that it will increase
nuclear proliferation because, in contemplating possible use of
nuclear weapons in response to CBW attacks, the United States is
abandoning a policy enunciated in 1978 forswearing U.S. nuclear
attacks on countries that do not possess nuclear weapons. In truth,
however, over the past decade senior government officials have
publicly stated that this country reserves the option of using nuclear
weapons in response to CBW attacks -- a flat contradiction of that
1978 policy.
Advocates of nuclear disarmament assert that U.S. backtracking from an
outdated policy that effectively gives nonnuclear countries a "safe
haven" for developing CBW will prompt further nuclear proliferation.
They exaggerate the impact of U.S. nuclear policy decisions on the
calculus of other countries to acquire or increase their nuclear
capabilities. There is little evidence to suggest that such decisions
by Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan or India were driven by the U.S.
nuclear posture. Conversely, the United States could get rid of all
its nuclear weapons tomorrow and these countries would not follow
suit. On the contrary, the one sure way to stimulate further
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would be for the United
States to level the playing field by slashing its nuclear arsenal to a
few hundred weapons.
The nuclear posture review represents an evolutionary change from the
nuclear doctrine that has emerged since the Cold War ended. The
reality is that nuclear weapons have a useful role to play in
deterring or defeating the use of certain weapons of mass destruction.
Instead of making overblown and misleading arguments, critics of the
nuclear review should debate the implications for deterrence and
stability of its one truly innovative feature -- the decision to rely
more heavily on conventional and missile defense capabilities in U.S.
strategic doctrine. Moreover, posing a credible threat to critical
targets in rogue states (or, for that matter, Russia and China) does
not require the thousands of nuclear warheads the administration plans
to keep. Critics should continue to press the administration for a
more convincing explanation of why the new nuclear strategy it has
articulated will produce a strategic force posture and force levels
almost identical to those planned by the Clinton administration under
a Cold War nuclear doctrine the Bush team has correctly discarded.
(The writers are senior research fellows at the National Defense
University's Institute for National Strategic Studies. The views
expressed here are their own.)
(end text)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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