Pdf Download
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Western States Legal Foundation Information Bulletin Winter 2001 Looking for New Ways to Use Nuclear Weapons: U.S. Counterproliferation Programs, Weapons Effects Research, and “Mini-Nuke” Development Despite claims by the United States United States. If U.S. policy points to nuclear government that it is de-emphasizing its nuclear weapons as the ultimate answer to CBW, other arsenal, research continues in government research states could have an increased motivation to laboratories to make nuclear weapons more acquire nuclear arsenals. Highlighting new or useable. This research mainly is aimed at continuing missions for nuclear forces could exploring ways to use small nuclear warheads to damage the nuclear nonproliferation consensus destroy or disable hardened targets such as tunnels throughout the world.1 and underground bunkers, and to attack facilities where chemical or biological weapons are made, The Post-Cold War Search for New Nuclear stored, or deployed in ways which will destroy Missions chemical or biological agents rather than dispersing them. Research of this kind threatens to blur the Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons strategists began looking for other uses warfare by lowering the political obstacles to the for their weapons and their skills, seeking to justify use of nuclear weapons. It makes it more likely a continuing need for nuclear weapons by painting that nuclear weapons will be used against states a picture of a world still full of dangerous that do not possess nuclear weapons, for example adversaries. By 1990, the Joint Chiefs of Staff was where U.S. forces are fighting in a regional war invoking “increasingly dangerous Third World and military and political decision makers believe threats” in its Military Net Assessment, as a those troops are threatened by chemical or rationale for retaining both strategic and non- biological warfare. strategic nuclear weapons.2 The refinement of nuclear weapons and the The use of nuclear weapons to threaten nations techniques of nuclear warfare to counter suspected of possessing weapons of mass biological and chemical weapons by the state with destruction [WMD], including non-nuclear the world’s most powerful military and provides weapons states, became policy both in word and in arguments for those who wish either to keep or deed during the 1990's. By the mid-nineties, use of obtain a nuclear arsenal that nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons against a broad range of potential both useful and legitimate. As the National WMD targets was being discussed in detail in the Academy of Sciences Committee on International nuclear weapons doctrine documents of the U.S. Security and Arms Control recognized, military services. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Doctrine for Joint Theater Nuclear Operations A policy of nuclear deterrence of CBW stated that [Chemical and Biological Weapons] would provide incentives and an easy justification for As nations continue to develop and obtain nuclear proliferation, which is inimical to U.S. WMD and viable delivery systems, the security. Many other countries face far more potential for US operations in such a lethal plausible and immediate CBW threats than the environment increases. In addition to Western States Legal Foundation g Information Bulletin 2 proliferation of WMD among rogue states, by chemical and biological attacks since the proliferation may also expand to include non- previous directive was issued. But he added state actors as well.... 3 that it only reiterates what senior administration officials already have said about Enemy combat forces and facilities that may be the issue during the past year - namely, that if likely targets for nuclear strikes include WMD any nation uses weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, ground combat against the United States, it may ‘forfeit’ its units, air defense facilities, naval installations, protection from U.S. nuclear attack under the combat vessels, nonstate actors, and 1995 pledge [reaffirming negative security underground facilities.4 assurances]. And as the post-Cold War era took shape Bell, however, later explicitly rejected any without any substantial national debate over the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear weapons use role of nuclear weapons in U.S. policy, nuclear against WMD stockpiles, stating that weapons doctrine continued to drift towards broader definitions of the threats which must be We have no plans, no planning, no deterred, and of the types of actions which intention, no policy of using nuclear “deterrence” might encompass: weapons preemptively to go after, take out, whatever you want to call it, WMD While there will certainly be long-term effects [weapons of mass destruction] storage or from the use of a nuclear device against any production facilities.... We have every target, counterforce strategy focuses on the conventional option we need to deal with more immediate operational effect. Nuclear our ability to target facilities that store or weapons might be used to destroy enemy produce weapons of mass destruction. WMD before they can be used, or they may be And that is distinct, then, from the use of used against enemy conventional forces if such weapons by an adversary in a other means to stop them have proven conflict where our negative security ineffective. This can reduce the threat to the assurance policy stands.7 United States and its forces and could, through the destruction of enemy forces, bring an end Yet Bell’s later pronouncement came against to the conflict.5 the background both of the calculated ambiguity of the public face of U.S. nuclear weapons use The United States has made assurances to non- doctrine and the recent history of U.S. threats to nuclear weapons states which are parties to the use nuclear weapons. It is generally acknowledged Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to regional that the United States threatened to use nuclear nuclear free zones that nuclear weapons would be weapons against Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War.8 used only against nuclear weapons states or states The U.S. made ambiguous threats to use nuclear acting in alliances with them.6 Nonetheless, nations weapons against Iraq again in early 1998, in without nuclear weapons apparently also are response to allegations by UNSCOM Chief considered legitimate targets for nuclear attack Inspector Richard Butler that Iraq possessed where chemical and biological weaponry is biological weapons.9 Defense department officials concerned. Concerning the 1997 Presidential also raised the possibility of nuclear weapons use Decision Directive-60 on nuclear weapons policy, against an alleged Libyan underground chemical The Washington Post reported that according to weapons plant in 1996. In this instance, as in the special assistant to the President Robert Bell, 1998 brandishing of nuclear weapons against Iraq, defense department officials referred to a nuclear Clinton’s nuclear targeting directive reflects warhead with a new earth penetrating capacity as ‘much greater sensitivity to the threats’ posed a possible weapon for use against alleged WMD Western States Legal Foundation g Information Bulletin 3 facilities.10 The weapon referred to is the B61-11, Non-Proliferation Treaty.14 The result was a a gravity bomb modified to add increased earth publicly declared policy of no “new” design penetrating capability, the first significant nuclear weapons production15 and a Congressional upgrading of a nuclear weapon achieved without restriction on low-yield nuclear weapons underground testing using the Department of development.16 But throughout the decade, a Energy’s (DOE) laboratory test and simulation major focus of research across the Department of facilities (discussed further below).11 Energy and Department of Defense laboratories was the effort to make nuclear weapons more Although both the 1996 and 1998 threats useable, an effort which continues to this day. against Libya and Iraq were later disavowed (or, in This research proceeds along two distinct but modern spin-speak, ‘clarified’), in essence the related lines: modification of existing nuclear damage had been done, and arguably the pattern of warheads for lower yields and effects tailored to threat and retraction is itself a tactic, part of the reduce “collateral damage,” and research on the intentional ambiguity of U.S. nuclear weapons effects of nuclear weapons when used or delivered policy.12 And it remains clear that threat or use of in innovative ways. nuclear weapons against the chemical, biological, and even conventional forces of regional Smaller Bombs for Smaller “Threats” adversaries is official U.S. policy: The effort to use nuclear weapons to target Deterring aggression and coercion on a regional adversaries and facilities where weapons day–to–day basis requires the capabilities of mass destruction might be made, stored, and needed to respond to the full range of crises, deployed received new impetus after the Gulf War. from smaller–scale contingencies to major The U.S. military found in that conflict that it theater wars. It also requires the maintenance wanted new weapons to attack certain difficult to of nuclear forces sufficient to deter any destroy targets, especially deeply buried, hardened potential adversary from using or threatening facilities and chemical and biological weapons, to use nuclear, chemical, or biological (NBC) which pose a danger if dispersed rather than weapons against the United States or its allies, destroyed. Along with these new missions came a and as a hedge against defeat of U.S. push for new technology, for it was evident that conventional forces in defense of vital the massive city and silo-busting nuclear warheads interests....13 which predominated in the long-range nuclear arsenal were unuseable in the regional Just Don’t Call them New Weapons: Nuclear expeditionary warfare considered likely by the U.S. Weapons Test Techniques and Warhead military in coming decades: Redesign for New Military Capabilities. ...[T]he Gulf War focused attention on the The pattern of U.S.