Posted on 06/14/2004 12:32:09 PM PDT by Pikamax
Editorial: Nixing nuclear folly
Does U.S. President George Bush need more nuclear weapons? Well, not really. He has 11,000 at his disposal right now. As far as we know, they work just fine.
So it comes as a relief that a U.S. Congress panel has just denied a Bush request for nearly $100 million to develop and test new "low-yield mini-nukes" and "bunker-busters." These bombs are meant to minimize fallout and to destroy buried targets.
Combined with Bush's readiness to consider pre-emptive nuclear strikes, even against non-nuclear-armed adversaries, these "battlefield" weapons would lower the psychological bar to using nukes, and increase the risk of nuclear war.
Democratic contender Sen. John Kerry, in an important policy clash with Bush, rightly calls the bunker-buster "a weapon we don't need."
Kerry also urges deeper cuts than planned to the U.S. and Russian arsenals, a more aggressive international approach to containing potential nuclear rebel states, such as North Korea and Iran, and stepped-up efforts to remove plutonium and highly enriched uranium from the world's stockpile of fissile materials.
These are approaches the Canadian government favours, too. The world doesn't need more "usable" nukes. It needs fewer, to reduce the risk that they might fall into the hands of Al Qaeda or a rogue nation.
For decades, the nuclear club consisted of the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Israel. In recent years India, Pakistan and North Korea have acquired nukes. And terrorists want them, too.
As the world's military superpower, the U.S. ought to restrict the spread of this technology, if only to safeguard its own primacy in this area.
Instead, incredibly, the Bush administration busies itself developing new rationales for using the Bomb, and proposes to build new ones.
This is folly. It gives legitimacy to the efforts of other nuclear wannabes to build arsenals, and undercuts arms control. The Congressional panel was right to tell the administration to cool its jets.
New Nuclear Program Sidelined
By Noah Shachtman | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1
11:42 AM Jun. 10, 2004 PT
It ain't dead, yet. But the Bush administration's push to research and develop new nuclear weapons could be on the verge of collapse, after a key Congressional leader moved on Wednesday to eliminate funding for the atomic arms projects.
Ohio Republican Rep. David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, wiped out $96 million in nuclear projects from the government's budget for next year -- including funds for researching nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs and low-yield, "mini-nuke" weapons. Hobson also snapped the purse strings of projects to build thousands more plutonium hearts for nuclear weapons and to fast-track atomic testing.
Just last week, the Department of Energy submitted a plan to pare thousands of weapons from America's existing nuclear arsenal. But, despite the proposal, much of the country's nuclear arms budget is still at "Cold War" levels, Hobson complained in a statement. The Energy Department "needs to take a 'time-out' on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget constraints and this new stockpile plan."
Anti-nuclear activists were giddy after Hobson's stand. Two weeks ago, the full House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment to take away the money for researching the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" -- a weapon designed to burrow deep into the ground before unleashing a nuclear hell-storm in underground bunkers. Taken together, activists said they believe the maneuvers forecast a gloomy future for a new atomic arsenal.
"With so little enthusiasm for research, there's not going to be any chance for developing and deploying new nuclear weapons," " said Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But the nuclear weapons budget still has a long way to go before Hobson's cuts are made final. And there are powerful members of Congress -- including Republican New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici -- who have been successful at preserving atomic funds.
"An extremely significant line in the sand has been drawn, courtesy of Mr. Hobson," said Jay Coughlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. "But these are just cuts marked up by a subcommittee -- albeit a very powerful subcommittee. Let's see how it survives the entire appropriations process."
Hobson has had a contentious history with the Energy Department's atomic overseers. Last year, he pared back proposed funding for some weapons research programs. For others, he withheld funds until the Bush administration came up with a plan to shrink the country's nuclear weapons stockpile. That road map -- to halve the American arsenal by 2012 -- was submitted last week.
"After several years of frustration, we finally put a fence around some of (Energy Department's) advanced concepts funding and said that it would not be available until the department delivered a revised stockpile plan," Hobson said in a statement. "I admit that we held a DOE program hostage until they produced this revised stockpile plan, and you know what? -- the power of the purse does work!"
Now, Hobson is going several steps further. He has taken away all the money for a plant to make nuclear weapons' plutonium cores, and for researching so-called "mini-nukes" -- low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons with less than a third of the destructive power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Energy Department did not respond to requests to comment. But Hobson's efforts are potentially bad news for the department's nuclear weapons facilities, like Los Alamos National Laboratory. After the House lifted a ban on low-yield research last year, National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks told lab chiefs in a memo (PDF) that, "We should not fail to take advantage of this opportunity. I expect your design teams to engage fully."
Sounds like the same old "nuclear freeze" mentality or psychology. If a nuclear exchange were to happen (think Korea, Iran, and maybe even China/Tiawan, it seems this kind of action guarantees that it will be extremely messy and terrible.
bump
And yet, Robert Oppenheimer originally came up with the crackpot tactical nukes scheme, and the Leftist Intelligensia has given him a pass on it.
Yes, we need more nukes, specifically those nukes. We are going to have to deal with NK sooner or later and we need the deep diggers. Perhaps also in Iran. I suspect there will be more countries in the future that will build nukes a mile deep. We should not fear 1st use because the saracen does will not hesitate to make 1st use. There will be no MAD with the paynim.
"This is folly. It gives legitimacy to the efforts of other nuclear wannabes to build arsenals, and undercuts arms control. The Congressional panel was right to tell the administration to cool its jets."
Trust the terminally asinine Canucks in Canuckistan to get it ass backwards. For one thing, it was the recommendation of a Congressional panel, NOT a final decision by Congress, and the panel probably half dumbass Democrats and one or two RINOs. For another, the folly would be NOT developing mini-nukes. If I wanted to develop a nuclear weapon, I now know that I can build the thing a mile underground without fear of interruption. A mini-nuke could be used to eliminate this threat. And nuclear proliferation will not be affected by this one way or another. The threat of these weapons is here to stay. The nuclear freeze crowd has had this issue wrong since Day One; wrong about the Soviets, wrong about Reagan, and wrong about everything else.
Didn't Kerry also vote against many of the systems we have now?
And who the hell cares what the Canadian leaders or the Canadian pundits think? They're on the wrong side of history at this point in time.
I searched and searched for a valid reference to the above comment and came up with zilch, nada, zero, nothing!
I hope Kerry decides to go to the wall on this issue. We have just had 8 days of people finally understanding that the placement of Pershing missles in Europe was part of the defeat of the USSR.
It would be bone he could throw to the far left, which is not totally happy with him.
So why is any of this the business of the Canukians to begin with?
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