@@ America's nuclear hypocrisy undermines its stance on Iran @@
Arash
March 16, 2006
America's nuclear hypocrisy undermines its stance on Iran
By Sanford Gottlieb
sandyglad[AT]hotmail.com
Even as he was telling Iran not to produce nuclear weapons, President Bush was urging
Congress to pay for a new nuclear weapon designed to destroy underground military
facilities.
Although the nuclear "bunker-buster" is still on the drawing board, Iran can be
expected to charge the United States with atomic hypocrisy during the current war of
words.
No less than a conservative Republican from Ohio, Representative David L. Hobson, has
thwarted Bush's push for the bunker-buster for the past two years. Congressman Hobson
chairs a House subcommittee that appropriates money for the nuclear weapons complex.
He persuaded the House not to spend a cent for research on the bunker-buster. The
Senate followed.
What worries him most about this weapon, Congressman Hobson has said, "is that some
idiot might try to use it".
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate subcommittee in April that 70
countries are pursuing "activities underground".
"We don't have a capability of dealing with that", he testified. "We can't go in and
get at things in solid rock underground". Rumsfeld suggested he needs the relatively
small bunker-buster to avoid using "a large, dirty nuclear weapon".
Yet at the time of his testimony, Rumsfeld probably saw a study from the National
Academy of Sciences estimating that the small bunker-buster, if used in an urban
area, could cause more than a million deaths. [1]
Pursuit of the bunker-buster and Rumsfeld's testimony confirm the administration's
shift away from nuclear deterrence toward possible use of nuclear weapons in war.
Under Bush's doctrine of pre-emption, the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has added
missions to its war plans. STRATCOM's global strike plan foresees the use of nuclear
weapons to pre-empt an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction or to destroy
an adversary's WMD stockpiles. [2]
The Pentagon's draft "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" describes these new
missions [3]. The draft was discovered on the Pentagon Web site in September by Hans
Kristensen, now with the Federation of American Scientists. When Hans Kristensen
shared his find with the media, the draft disappeared from the Web site. But
STRATCOM's war plans remain in force.
"You may win this year", Rumsfeld told Congressman Hobson in 2005, "but we'll be
back". Meanwhile, Congress has mandated that any future earth-penetrator weapon must
be based on conventional explosives.
The Pentagon had hedged its bets. In 2004, the Defense Department awarded a contract
to Boeing to design and test a huge conventional bomb, to be known as the Massive
Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It would be the biggest conventional bomb in the U.S.
arsenal, capable of demolishing "multistory buildings with hardened bunkers and
tunnel facilities". [4]
So why has the administration been pressing for a nuclear version?
The United States still has a massive Cold War arsenal. About 5000 hydrogen bombs and
warheads are deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and bombers;
another 5000 are held in reserve. In addition, 600 to 700 tactical nuclear weapons
are ready for battlefield use. [5]
Russia has fewer than 5000 H-bombs deployed but many thousands more in reserve, and
3000 tactical nuclear weapons. Many Russian nuclear weapons are not fully secured.
Britain, France, China and Israel have several hundred nuclear weapons each. India
and Pakistan are slowly building their arsenals.
In addition to the bunker-buster, the Bush administration wants new nuclear warheads
to replace old ones. Daryl G. Kimball [6], executive director of the Arms Control
Association, is dubious. He thinks the replacement process could be a back door to
new warhead concepts, not what's needed when trying to persuade Iran to keep out of
the nuclear club. A more meaningful approach, says Daryl Kimball, would be to slash
the swollen U.S. and Russian arsenals.
Yet under the Treaty of Moscow [7], by 2012, both nuclear behemoths could still
deploy 2200 long-range nuclear weapons, not counting those in reserve and tactical
arms. The world will still bristle with the most destructive of weapons of mass
destruction 22 years after the Cold War's end.
That's not a prospect likely to dissuade the insecure leaders of Iran.
* Sanford Gottlieb, a former executive director of the National Committee for a Sane
Nuclear Policy, is the author of "Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?".
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.nuclear16mar16,0,3895655.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
Notes:
--------
[1] Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons.
Committee on the Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons, National
Research Council.
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309096731?OpenDocument
http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309096731/html
[2] Not Just A Last Resort?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8857.htm
U.S. nuclear first strike doctrine is operational
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3221conplan_8022.html
[3] Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations
http://www.nukestrat.com/us/jcs/jp.htm
http://cryptome.org/joint/joint-pubs.htm
[4] Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/dshtw.htm
Strangelove Revisited: Or How I'm Trying to Relax and Love the Bombs
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Glover0724.htm
[5] United States Nuclear Forces, 2006
http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf06norris
[6] Daryl G. Kimball
http://www.armscontrol.org/about/kimball.asp
[7] Treaty of Moscow
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_14a.html