[Peace-discuss] Bush's nuclear threat

[patton paul]

Going Backwards
Preemptive Strikes Part Of U.S. Strategic Doctrine
'All Options' Open for Countering Unconventional Arms
by Mike Allen and Barton Gellman


A Bush administration strategy announced yesterday calls for the
preemptive use of military and covert force before an enemy unleashes
weapons of mass destruction, and underscores the United States's
willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons for chemical or biological
attacks on U.S. soil or against American troops overseas.

The strategy introduces a more aggressive approach to combating weapons of
mass destruction, and it comes as the nation prepares for a possible war
with Iraq.


Under Bush Pentagon officials appear to have taken a step closer to the
possible, limited use of nuclear weapons by pursuing new and more usable
ones.

A version of the strategy that was released by the White House said the
United States will "respond with overwhelming force," including "all
options," to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear
weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies.

However, a classified version of the strategy goes even further: It breaks
with 50 years of U.S. counterproliferation efforts by authorizing
preemptive strikes on states and terrorist groups that are close to
acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the long-range missiles capable
of delivering them. The policy aims to prevent the transfer of weapons
components or to destroy them before they can be assembled.

In a top-secret appendix, the directive names Iran, Syria, North Korea and
Libya among the countries that are the central focus of the new U.S.
approach. Administration officials said that does not imply that President
Bush intends to use military force, covert or overt, in any of those
countries. He is determined, they said, to stop transfers of weapons
components in or out of their borders.

The policy sets out the practical ramifications of Bush's doctrine of
preemption, contained in a national security strategy released in
September, which turns away from the Cold War doctrine based on deterrence
and containment. The preemption doctrine favors taking on hostile states
before they can strike.

It broadens a warning that was made to Iraq on the eve of the Persian Gulf
War of 1991. A letter from President George H.W. Bush promised "the
strongest possible response" if Iraq were to use chemical and biological
weapons against U.S. and allied troops.

But the new policy is more specific, detailing the consequences of an
enemy's use of weapons of mass destruction. "The United States will
continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with
overwhelming force -- including through resort to all of our options -- to
the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends
and allies," the document says.

The timing of the document's release yesterday sends an unmistakable
message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein about the potential consequences
of using nonconventional weapons in a future war.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on the new strategy,
said those options include nuclear force. The official said the 1991
letter had its intended effect. "He [Hussein] didn't cross the line of
using chemical or biological weapons," the official said. "The Iraqis have
told us that they interpreted that letter as meaning that the United
States would use nuclear weapons, and it was a powerful deterrent."

In the past, U.S. officials saw some advantage in keeping the world
guessing about how the United States would respond to evidence that a
country or a terrorist group was hiding weapons of mass destruction deep
underground. And Bush administration officials were at pains yesterday to
insist that there is nothing new in their formulation.

Under Bush, however, Pentagon officials appear to have taken a step closer
to the possible, limited use of nuclear weapons by pursuing new and more
usable ones. A review of nuclear policy completed by defense officials a
year ago put added emphasis on developing low-yield nuclear weapons that
could be used to burrow deep into the earth and destroy underground
complexes, including stores of chemical and biological arms. This has
raised questions about whether the administration is lowering the
threshold for using nuclear weapons.

Officials deny that they are doing so. But they also argue that the
strategic calculations necessary for combating terrorism and hostile
nations must inherently be different from those used during the Cold War,
when deterrence meant simply convincing the Soviets that the United
States, if attacked, could and would wipe them out. Against today's new
enemies, the administration has argued, it may be necessary to strike
preemptively and with nuclear weapons that would keep fallout to a
minimum.

The administration published a broader national security strategy in
September, and the preparation of a separate policy on weapons of mass
destruction reflects the seriousness with which the administration takes
the threat of attacks from rogue states and terrorist organizations.
"Every administration seems to come under criticism for not having a
strategy," the official said.

The six-page strategy released by the White House yesterday was a
declassified extract of a top secret directive signed by Bush in May after
resolving interagency disputes dating to January. It is among the first
major policy collaborations of the National Security Council and the new
Homeland Security Council, whose chairman is Tom Ridge. The classified
version is identified jointly as National Security Presidential Directive
(NSPD) 17 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 4.

The new strategy does not repudiate "traditional measures" of diplomacy,
multinational arms control agreements and export controls. But in its
classified form, and in the interagency process that drafted it, the
directive is premised on a view that "traditional nonproliferation has
failed, and now we're going into active interdiction," according to one
participant who spoke without authority from the White House.

Active interdiction, the official said, "is physical -- it's disruption,
it's destruction in any form, whether kinetic or cyber."

Explaining the new approach, one official gave the hypothetical scenario
of a ship using the Philippines as a transshipment point for special
weapons to Libya. "We're going to interdict or destroy or disrupt that
shipment or, during the transloading process, it is going to mysteriously
disappear," the official said.

The official spoke as Spanish special forces, with U.S. intelligence
support, stopped a North Korean ship bound for Yemen with Scud missiles.
In rare cases, previous presidents have mounted preemptive strikes against
nonconventional weapons. Those episodes, including the August 1998 missile
strike on an alleged Sudanese chemical weapons plant and the bombing of
some targets in Iraq four months later, have generally come in retaliation
for specific enemy attacks.

Bush hinted at the new approach in a Dec. 11, 2001, speech at the Citadel,
speaking of active counterproliferation. By January, a draft of NSPD 17
was circulating in the State Department, the White House, the Defense
Department and the intelligence agencies. State Department officials
objected to some elements of the new approach but failed to carry the
decision. The Homeland Security Office, represented by policy director
Richard A. Falkenrath, interjected itself as jointly responsible for
managing the consequences of a successful attack on the United States.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to one participant,
objected in April to language that he believed commingled military and
domestic lines of authority. Bush signed the draft unchanged in May.

The intention, in theory, is not fundamentally new. The Clinton
administration's Presidential Decision Directive 62, "Protection Against
Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas," had
classified language that one former official summarized as: "If you think
terrorists will get access to WMD, there is an extremely low threshold
that the United States should act" militarily.

Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.

 2002 The Washington Post Company

###

     FAIR USE NOTICE     This site contains copyrighted material the use
of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go
beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
__________________________________________________________________