Bush s Proposed Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Measures Will Increase Chances of Nuclear War

Bush’s Proposed Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Measures Will Increase Not Decrease the Prospects of Future Nuclear Conflict

Just last week, President Bush and Russian President Putin of Russia concluded their summit in Crawford, Texas with much fanfare. While Bush and Putin showcased their warm relationship, they failed to come to an agreement on the future of the ABM Treaty or to sign an agreement for a bilateral reduction of US and Russian nuclear weapons. Bush has repeatedly stated that he prefers unilateral nuclear disarmament to a bilateral accord in which the Russians also promised to greatly reduce the level of their own strategic nuclear deterrent.

Back in February, Bush ordered a Nuclear Posture Review to determine what the minimal size of the US nuclear deterrent could be and still successfully deter a nuclear attack from Russia and/or any other nuclear powers. This Nuclear Posture Review was completed but never disclosed to the public reportedly because it advocated that the absolute minimum number of strategic nuclear weapons necessary to constitute an effective deterrent was 2300-2500 and that Bush rejected its conclusions preferring to disarm to considerably lower levels.

At the onset of the Bush-Putin summit, President Bush announced his plan to go against the recommendation of his Secretary of Defense and top generals who know better and begin unilaterally disarming the US strategic nuclear deterrent from the current 7200 warheads to 1700-2200 weapons—up to a 75% reduction. The reason for this proposed range of weapons was an attempt to placate his generals, however the Administration has clearly indicated that Bush would prefer to disarm to the low-end level of 1700 warheads.

At the summit, President Bush reiterated his past promise to unilaterally disarm to this minimal level “regardless of what Russia does.” In making these very considerable unilateral concessions at the onset of the summit, Bush failed the test of negotiating strategy by throwing away any incentive the Russians had to make their own concessions since we had no more concessions left to make. Therefore, it was not surprising that the only “positive” result of the summit was a vague, unspecific and unenforceable Russian promise to disarm from 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads to 2,000—a number which President Putin appeared to pull out of a hat after his statements that Russia would merely “try” to match the Bush unilateral nuclear reductions were poorly received.

While Bush's unilateral disarmament measures certainly do not guarantee a future nuclear war with Russia, they go far to make one more likely. History has proved the veracity of the fundamental assertion that unilateral disarmament increases the risks and the prospects for war. I cannot think of a single conflict or international dispute in the history of the world won by unilateral disarmament. You see, unilateral disarmament often creates dangerous imbalances when one country disarms but another does not which in turn have the effect of inciting wars begun by aggressor nations rather than averting them. Would the world have been safer or more peaceful if the nations of Western Europe had unilaterally disarmed in 1939 in the face of a credible military threat from Nazi Germany?

Critics of such a view respond that the world has permanently changed, that we have entered a New World Order in which major wars have been rendered obsolete, that Russia is our new strategic ally in the war against terrorism, and that besides the Russians are too broke and their military too broken down to pose a credible threat to the United States. They are wrong. War is not obsolete and never will be as history has proven until the Lord himself returns to bring peace to the world’s nations. If history is to be our guide, there will be a major war within the next fifty years and nuclear weapons may be employed in war once again. Russia is not our ally and cannot be until she is truly democratized and cleansed of KGB/Communist influence. The Russian strategic nuclear force is fully funded and is maintained at a relatively high state of readiness with frequent nuclear war exercises conducted by them against the United States.

In examining the threat of nuclear attack from Russia, one must look to capabilities and intentions. The 1995 US Nuclear Posture Review warned of the possibility of a quick shift in the intentions of the top Russian leadership stating, “A significant shift in the Russian government into the hands of arch-conservatives could restore the strategic nuclear threat to the United States literally overnight.” President Putin, a former director of the renamed KGB widely considered by Russia experts to be a Russian hard-liner, became Acting President in December 1999 and subsequently President of the Russian Federation “restoring” the Russian strategic nuclear threat to the United States.

Even if Putin’s intentions were favorable to the United States, the Russian capability to stage a successful nuclear first strike against the United States which would destroy the bulk of our strategic nuclear deterrent and gravely weaken our capability to retaliate remains unchanged and will be greatly increased by Bush’s proposed unilateral nuclear disarmament measures if they are in fact implemented. Bush has declared his intention to rely not upon nuclear weapons to deter war and keep the nuclear peace as past US Presidents have done during the past 56 years, but rather upon the good graces of the President of the Russian Federation to follow his lead and match his unilateral nuclear disarmament measures. How soon the Bush Administration has forgotten President Reagan’s time-honored slogan of “peace through strength!”

The most likely scenario for a hypothetical nuclear war is a targeted counterforce Attack or preemptive nuclear ‘first strike’ by the Russian Strategic Rocket Force on the US strategic arsenal which if small-scale enough could be disguised as a terrorist strike. Such a feigned terrorist attack would be facilitated if done using non-Russian flagged ships in our ballistic missile submarine bases at King’s Bay in Georgia and at Bangor, Washington and at Norfolk for example where at least 2 aircraft carriers and scores of warships are routinely holed up at any give time. The terrorist attack of September 11th has highlighted the vulnerability of our ports to terrorist attack particularly if they were to utilize weapons of mass destruction. More likely than a Russian nuclear attack against a unilaterally disarmed United States in possession of as few as 25% as many strategic warheads many of which would be on platforms—missiles and bombers which have been dealerted, is the Russian use of nuclear blackmail to goad us into caving into their foreign policy demands. US acquiescence to such demands would of course spell not only the end of the vaunted US global hegemony, but it would signal the beginning of a new Russian and Russian-allied global hegemony and replace the era of Pax Americana with the era of Pax Sovietica.

Russia has changed so much less than we are led to believe. While their country has been reduced in size by 23% and their population by 45% since the fall of the Soviet empire, they retain the same nuclear arsenal, which has been only slightly reduced from Soviet times, an improved national strategic defense system, and an authoritarian President and former KGB director whose main foreign policy goal is to restore the glory and power of the old Soviet empire. Russia signed a formal alliance with Communist China in July which has not been negated by recent US-Russian cooperative efforts against terrorism. Russia is pursuing an old tactic which Clinton used called triangulation which enables it to get what it wants from the US and from Communist China at more or less the same time.

Putin intends to reconstitute the member states of the old USSR into a new federation led by Moscow. He intends to penetrate Western political and military groupings and either neutralize them or co-opt them into unwittingly furthering Russian foreign policy objectives. He intends to disarm the West of its military and especially nuclear potential while retaining the bulk of Russia's own arsenal to so alter the correlation of forces as to make the Russian Federation the world's dominant military strategic power. Western analysts lamely believe that Russia cannot afford to maintain its nuclear weapons at current levels, but in fact recent indications as well as an increasingly robust Russian economic recovery suggest that they can, at least for the foreseeable future.

The proposed level of 1,700 warheads is well below even the `minimal deterrence level of 2,000 warheads advocated by the radical anti-nuke crowd and unilateral disarmers for decades. It is insufficient to deter nuclear attack from Russia because it makes it much easier for the Russians to destroy our nuclear deterrent before we have a chance to use it. The massive Russian national ABM system reported by William T. Lee in his authoritative work, The ABM Treaty Charade : A Study in Elite Illusion and Delusion and confirmed in the leftwing Center for Defense Information’s Russian Federation Nuclear Arsenal chart consisting of 1750 neutron warhead armed S-300 SAM/ABMs could presumably shoot down whatever part of our strategic nuclear deterrent would survive a hypothetical Russian nuclear first strike. Many pundits discount the increasingly well-documented Russian capability to shoot down US strategic missiles, but why else would the Russians put small-yield nuclear warheads atop their “air defense” missiles—to shoot down obsolescent US strategic bombers?

Concerned Americans need to launch a Congressionally led effort to convince Bush not to unilaterally disarm the country of its nuclear deterrent, which he has said he would do over a period of ten years leaving us with a grand total of 1700 strategic nukes in 2011 rather than the 7200 we have today and the 6000 we will have on December 31, 2001 when the START I Treaty enters into full force. The never-ratified START 2 Treaty already requires the US to deactivate and remove from their launchers all but 3500 warheads by the end of 2003. Bush plans to first remove the warheads and dealert our missiles, which will effectively disarm us in the short terms since these dealerted weapons will not be ready to defend the country against nuclear attack, and then destroy the warheads over the next decade.

We need to enlist every ally we can imagine in Congress to sign a letter to the President asking that Bush reverse course here. We need to bombard our representatives with calls, letters, and E-mails to urge President Bush to halt his unilateral nuclear disarmament plans and retain our nuclear deterrent at a much higher and more credible level than what he has proposed. The future independence and perhaps even the very existence of the United States as a country may well depend on it.

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David T. Pyne is a national security expert who works as a defense professional with responsibility for the countries of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and North and South America among others. Mr. Pyne is also a licensed attorney, former Army Reserve Officer and member of the Center for Emerging National Security Affairs. He is presently serving as Executive Vice President of the Virginia Republican Assembly.

I completely disagree with Bush's planned unilateral nuclear disarmament plan. It will leave us much too vulnerable to a Russian nuclear first strike.

Here here. Reminds me of the New Zealand PM who dismantled the military with the haughty declaration that they were going to promote peace, not violence. (Big sign taped on Auckland's backside: "Kick Me. I'm Unarmed!")

A good place to start promoting a course correction:

Step 1

Of note are the links regarding upcoming joint session hearings, and ones regarding taking direct action. There is also a major effort to increase awareness amongst the political and intel communities, participation is still possible. "A journey of 1000 miles," as they say....

It is insufficient to deter nuclear attack from Russia because it makes it much easier for the Russians to destroy our nuclear deterrent before we have a chance to use it.

What about our Sub's?

They are hidden beneath the sea and are mobile. Able to reconfigure and oppose any emerging threat.

Is dubya a cringing weenie or are we now looking at a more dynamic defense?

Frankly, the idea of a land based weapon bothers me because it becomes a target as much as a weapon.

"It is no small irony that we are denied access to documents to protect an investigation, which, it is alleged, was dealt a serious blow by your administration's actions in the face of strong objections by the Justice Department.

"Irony" just doesn't go far enough..

David T. Pyne is a national security expert

If this guy is a "expert",I'm the next Pope. While it would be a considerable stretch to call me a Bush supporter,he is right on this issue. We can throw our money away on VERY expensive defense systems that are surplus to our needs,or actually spend the money where it is needed. Even 1700 nukes is far in excess of what is needed for defensive purposes. All you can kill your enemy is dead.

First off,Russia is no real danger to us. They are MUCH more likely to be our ally in any future war than they are our opponet.

The real danger we face is guerilla warfare. There is really no effective way to protect yourself from a few nutcases with suitcase nukes. Nobody wants to hear this because it is a truth that makes them feel insecure,and no government really wants to admit it,since protecting it's citizens from attack for foreign countries is THE prime reason governments exist.

In short,this is one of the few rare instances where Bubba-2 is doing the right thing. I hope none of you Bush-Bots who have read this fell down and hurt yourselves.

I don't want to be bumped to any lists. It has nothing to do with interest in this or that subject and everything to do with how I use reply trackers to carry on conversations, back and forth, in all the noise FR necessarily generates, including quite long conversations in quite old threads that have long since dropped below the recent post radar.

I do not want to be distracted from actual conversations - specific replies to things I have written - and I write a lot, long pieces and not in vanity posts but in replies - by generalized lists that are nothing more than attempts to manipulate my attention. Let me decide what I find interesting, thank you very much, and get the heck out of my reply feedback loop.

I happen to find the use of such lists incredibly obnoxious, incidentally, and I doubt I am alone in that regard. I started with just a polite request, and your response was patronizing. Thus the explanation and lecture.

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