Air Force study favors terrorist nuclear posture

By John Diamond, Associated Press, 1 March 1998

WASHINGTON (March 1, 1998 12:48 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net)—The United States should maintain the threat of nuclear retaliation with an irrational and vindictive streak to intimidate would-be attackers such as Iraq, according to an internal military study made public Sunday.

The study, Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, was written by the Air Force's Strategic Command, military headquarters responsible for the nation's strategic nuclear arsenal. It was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by an arms control group and published Sunday in a report on U.S. strategies for deterring attacks by antagonistic nations using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the U.S. may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed, the 1995 Strategic Command study says.

The London-based think tank the British-American Security Information Council cited the STRATCOM document in its report as an example of the Pentagon's push to maintain a mission for its nuclear arsenal long after the Soviet threat disappeared.

The report portrays the command as fighting and winning an internal bureaucratic battle against liberal Clinton administration officials who lean in favor of dramatic nuclear weapons reductions.

Citing a range of formerly classified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the report shows how the United States shifted its nuclear deterrent strategy from the defunct Soviet Union to so-called rogue states: Iraq, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and the like.

In its study, the Strategic Command uses Cold War language in defending the relevance of nuclear weapons in deterring such potential adversaries.

The fact that some elements (of the U.S. government) may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers, its report said. That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.

Two years after this document was written, President Clinton approved a directive on U.S. nuclear policy that upheld the negative security assurance that the United States will refrain from first-use of nuclear weapons against signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a list that includes Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

The policy, however, includes exceptions that presidential adviser Robert Bell said have been refined in recent years. They would allow responding with nuclear weapons to attacks by nuclear-capable states, countries that are not in good standing under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or states allied with nuclear powers. Iraq, which the United States regards as violating international atomic weapons restrictions, could be one such exception.

Arms control advocates are concerned that signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty who possess no nuclear weapons will abandon the pact if they see the existing nuclear powers preserving their nuclear arsenals and finding missions for their weapons -- particularly if those missions include scenarios that involve attacks on them.

Bell, President Clinton's senior adviser on nuclear weapons and arms control matters, disputed that argument in an interview Friday.

I don't think there's a disconnect in principle between some level of general planning at STRATCOM and the negative security assurance and our goals relative to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Bell said. Treaty signatories are more worried about their neighbors than the United States, Bell said, and they support the nuclear weapons reductions the treaty imposes on nuclear-armed states.

Of the 1995 Strategic Command document, Bell said, That sounds like an internal STRATCOM paper which certainly does not rise to the level of national policy.

Navy Lt. Laurel Tingley, spokeswoman for the Omaha, Neb.-based command, said she could not comment on the council's report until it could be reviewed in detail. She restated the command's basic policy guidance that deterrence of attacks involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons is the fundamental purpose of U.S. nuclear forces.

Worried that the Clinton administration wanted to end the command's role, an internal memo referred in 1993 to then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who was in charge of proliferation and arms control issues, as having negative feelings toward nuclear weapons. Background information on Carter, the command document said, indicated a less than favorable long-term outlook for nuclear weapons and long-term visions of complete denuclearization.

Carter, now at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said in a telephone interview the Strategic Command saw its influence within the Pentagon waning as budgets for nuclear weapons were slashed after the Cold War.

At the Pentagon, Carter was trying to develop nonnuclear options for retaliating against rogue attackers who used weapons of mass destruction, he said, because any president would surely prefer to have nonnuclear options.

It doesn't surprise me at all that those who were responsible for nuclear weapons budgets would find that threatening, Carter said. But at the time, he said, the real threat to the Strategic Command's mission came not from civilian Pentagon officials but from within the uniformed military.