Posted on 04/16/2004 1:56:58 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration says in a new report to Congress that a recently repealed ban on U.S. low-yield nuclear weapons research and development will not harm U.S. nonproliferation diplomacy or encourage proliferation, as critics have charged (see GSN, March 22).
The White House sought and won a repeal of the 10-year-old law last year despite opposition from congressional Democrats and significant international disapproval, enabling the administration to pursue plans this year for basic research and development on low-yield nuclear weapons, defined as those with yields below five kilotons (see GSN, Nov. 6).
“There is no reason to believe that [the] repeal has had or will have any practical impact on the pursuit of nuclear weapons by proliferating states, on the comprehensive diplomatic efforts ongoing to address these threats, or on the possible modernization of nuclear weapons by China or Russia,” said Linton Brooks, administrator of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, in a letter accompanying the report on March 31.
The report argues that the pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities — by rogue states, terrorists and Russia — would occur regardless of what the United States does with its own nuclear weapons.
Rogue state proliferation “marches forward independently of the U.S. nuclear programs,” it says.
Other states, it says, “typically base their nuclear R&D programs on their own perceived security needs not on the specifics of U.S. R&D.”
International Reaction Detected
A range of prominent critics, though, including officials from several friendly governments and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have argued the opposite of the report’s claims.
They have said that by pursuing such work the United States is stepping back from its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitment to move towards eventual nuclear disarmament, making other countries feel less secure and undermining U.S. credibility when it urges restraint by other nations (see GSN, March 30).
“I have strong reservations, to say the least, when I read that there are plans to research small nukes,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei reportedly told National Public Radio last September.
“It really sends absolutely the wrong message, that we are not moving towards disarmament, but that we are reversing course,” he said.
A senior Russian official said earlier this month that the emergence of such “battlefield weapons” would be “super scary” and could prompt Russia to pursue its own low-yield warheads.
“We will be compelled to modify the development of our own strategic nuclear forces depending on Washington’s plans for the use of these weapons,” Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky was quoted this month in the Russian journal Izvestia.
“This research could let the genie out of the bottle. These weapons could disrupt the existing parity of nuclear deterrence and drastically alter the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also said in the Izvestia story.
“That’s typical of the comments that the Russians have been making for 10 years,” said David Culp, legislative representative of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
“The repeal “undercuts our political and moral stance when we’re saying we’re going to develop weapons ourselves,” he added.
The U.S. secretaries of state, defense, and energy prepared the report as required by law, and recently sent it to Congress. It was obtained by the Friends Committee and distributed to reporters by e-mail Wednesday.
The report says, “Although Russia states that U.S. nuclear capabilities are still a factor in its decisions about nuclear forces, we believe there is a relatively weak coupling between Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons R&D efforts.”
Nuclear Credibility
While the repeal “will slightly complicate U.S. nonproliferation diplomacy, we anticipate no significant impact on U.S. ability to achieve our objectives at the 2005 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference,” the agencies also wrote.
They note that the treaty permits the United States to possess nuclear weapons and does not expressly restrict U.S. work on developing and fielding new types.
“Nothing in the NPT … or any other treaty … prohibits the United States from carrying out nuclear weapons exploratory research, or for that matter, from developing and fielding new or modified nuclear warheads,” the report says.
U.S. representatives will seek to counter negative reactions by emphasizing a “strong record of actions and policies” that demonstrate compliance with the NPT’s eventual arms reduction requirement, the report adds, citing arms cuts made mostly in the early 1990s.
The report says further that fielding lower-yield warheads could actually discourage proliferation, by reassuring allies that the United States has nuclear weapons it would be more willing to use because they would cause fewer casualties.
“It is important to note that the credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear umbrella is extremely significant to the restraint of proliferation,” it says.
It says, though, that having such weapons would not necessarily mean the United States would be more ready to resort to nuclear weapons in a conflict.
The benefit would be gained from potential adversaries thinking the threshold for use would be lower, the report says, but assures that “the nuclear threshold for the United States has been, is, and always will be very high.”
Concern for U.S. Capabilities
Critics charge the administration with undervaluing the effect of U.S. nuclear weapons policies on other countries security considerations.
“Unless it discussed and acknowledged [that] there is a potential impact, the study itself is incomplete because it’s already clear from the words that we’re hearing [from foreign officials] that this is making the U.S. goal of stemming proliferation more difficult,” said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He added, “Countries are constantly re-evaluating their nonproliferation commitments, and in a world where the United States appears to be considering improvements to its nuclear weapons capabilities, not just potential adversaries, but friends such as Japan, South Korea, and Brazil, may say, ‘If it’s good for the U.S. to look at these options, it’s good for us to look at them too.’”
“They are not being honest in their analysis,” said Culp, who said that low-yield weapons work could undermine U.S. efforts to persuade North Korea and Iran through international pressure to give up their nuclear weapons programs.
“If we’re not going to show nuclear restraint in our program, it becomes very difficult to gain international support … for getting countries like Iran and North Korea to show restraint, which is what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said.
While the report says that so-called “rogue” regimes in North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons in part to pursue aggressive policies in their respective regions with impunity, others have argued such countries seek nuclear weapons largely to counter a perceived U.S. threat.
“Pyongyang considers its nuclear weapons program critical to regime survival,” Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby said in congressional testimony in February.
“North Korean media reports suggest [leader] Kim Jong Il believes the speed and success of Operation Iraqi Freedom underscores the ineffectiveness of the North’s conventional forces and the value of nuclear weapons,” he said.
The administration’s report says such countries are likely more concerned with U.S. conventional capabilities than nuclear ones.
Administration officials, though, have said low-yield weapons offer a potential for credibly threatening rogue leaders such as Kim, who are suspected of constructing very deep and hardened bunkers, and for potential use in quickly destroying chemical and biological agents (see GSN, Jan. 23).
“In every one of these capitals you’ve got nuclear hawks and nuclear doves,” Culp said.
“Their case is strengthened when you’ve got the Bush administration talking about first use of nuclear weapons and developing nuclear weapons specifically to be used against North Korea,” he said.
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