[Peace-discuss] the perils of nuclear ignorance

[patton paul]

The party of preemption
By Christopher Paine


The Bush administration's still-secret December 2001 Nuclear Posture
Review complained about the "limitations in the present nuclear force" and
asserted that "new capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging
threats."

"With a more effective earth penetrator," the report claimed, "many buried
targets could be attacked using a weapon with a much lower [nuclear] yield
than would be required with a surface burst." Of course, "penetrating
weapons with large yields" would still be needed for the "defeat of very
deep or large underground facilities."

But the goal--to "shorten the time between identifying a target and having
an [attack] option available"--would cause "significant stress on the
nuclear planning process as it currently exists." The answer: "improving
the tools used to build and execute strike plans, so that the national
leadership can adapt pre-planned options, or construct new options, during
highly dynamic crisis situations." And that means new, more "flexible,
adaptable strike plans," including "options for variable and reduced
yields, high accuracy, and timely employment."

Multibillion dollar preparations are now being made to make those limited
nuclear strikes possible, which raises a frightening thought: Could the
fearful, conformist climate of the post-9/11 "war on terror," coupled with
one-party control of both the executive and legislative branches of
government, give the president the political latitude to actually order a
nuclear first strike? The Senate's recent debate, culminating in a vote to
resume research on earth-penetrating and low-yield nuclear weapons (after
a 10-year hiatus), offers a disturbing glimpse of the direction the
Republicans expect U.S. counterproliferation strategy to take in the years
ahead.

Rising in opposition to Democratic efforts to maintain the statutory ban
on the research and development of new nuclear weapons, Jeff Sessions of
Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee's
Air-Land Subcommittee, argued:

"This country has a moral responsibility to lead in this world and we will
not be an effective leader if we don't maintain leadership in all forms of
weaponry--yes, including nuclear weaponry. It is just that simple. . . .
They say we can't use it [nuclear weapons] against Al Qaeda. Maybe we can,
maybe we can't. Probably we would not use a nuclear weapon against a group
like Al Qaeda."

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, was considerably
less agnostic about the need for a U.S. nuclear attack capability to use
against terrorists. He envisioned a long Darwinian struggle and predicted
"the group that wins the war on terrorism will be the group that was able
to adapt the best."

"I can foresee in the near future, not the distant future, that terrorist
cells will reorganize. They will use some remote part of the world to form
their plans, to plot and scheme, and maybe to actually manufacture . . .
in a part of the world where it would be hard to get conventional forces
to neutralize the terrorist threat. I see that as a very real possibility
in the coming decades, in the coming years, maybe even the coming months.
. . .

"This war has just started. It is not anywhere near over. . . . The
question before the Senate and before the country is, if we knew that bin
Laden, or someone like him, was in some mountain fortress in Afghanistan
or some other country, on the verge, within that fortress, of developing a
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon, what would we do to stop it? I
think we should do everything we can to stop it. And the idea of being
able to use a redesigned nuclear weapon to keep a terrorist from hitting
us with a nuclear weapon is something that we have to come to grips with
because it is part of the war on terrorism."

The notion that terrorists would either need or choose to develop weapons
of mass destruction in some remote, impregnable fortress that could only
be breached with nuclear weapons is, to say the least, fanciful, even
bizarre. Senator Graham must have watched one too many action thrillers on
late-night TV. After all, the 9/11 hijackers did not skulk in some remote
bunker before they attacked. For months they lived among us and took
flying lessons.

A simple terrorist weapon would more likely be developed in some
nondescript needle of a basement laboratory, buried within the haystack of
one of the world's great mega-cities, than in some fortified Schloss bin
Laden. An improvised terrorist device using highly enriched uranium could
be smuggled into this country in virtually undetectable segments, and then
assembled in any one of 50 million suburban garages.

Similarly, going to the trouble of manufacturing and transporting an
arsenal of chemical warheads from some remote mountain redoubt hardly
seems necessary. Millions of tons of lethal chemicals are already here,
stored on-site at U.S. chemical plants, awaiting a resourceful terrorist's
efforts to blow them up while the administration cozies up to the chemical
manufacturers and blocks legislation that would mandate reductions in
these stocks.

Nuclear weapons would be utterly useless in these more probable scenarios,
unless, of course, the Republicans become so enamored of preemption that
they would consider nuking a neighborhood in Karachi or Baghdad to prevent
a suspected terrorist weapon from finding its way to New York. During the
recent debate, Jon Kyl of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Republican
Policy Committee, appeared willing to do just that, even without invoking
the in extremis justification of an impending mass-casualty attack. Kyl
strongly implied that a "precise low-yield nuclear weapon" would be an
acceptable means for crushing Saddam in his bunker:

"The reason low-yield weapons research is being sought is because the
world has changed since the time we developed these huge megaton nuclear
weapons that can kill millions in just a few seconds.

"Instead of wanting to use those kinds of weapons, the United States would
prefer, if it had to, to use a much smaller weapon, a low-yield nuclear
weapon. . . . In the most recent conflict in Iraq, we literally saw
missiles flying through windows of buildings in downtown Baghdad. The kind
of precision we have today enables us to use much smaller-yield weapons to
achieve the same results that large conventional weapons are being used
for today. But they can do so much more effectively.

"For example, we know that some so-called conventional bunker busters were
used in an attempt to decapitate the Iraqi leadership in the early stages
of the war. . . . But it did not do the job . . . apparently the
leadership of the Iraqi regime lived on. So we cannot say we have the
capability, even in dealing with that regime, to destroy those kinds of
targets.

"What we know from intelligence is that there are a lot of other nations
in the world that know one thing: If you get deep enough underground with
enough steel and concrete above your head, they can't get you. That is
exactly the kind of facility being built by our potential enemies today.
There is only one way to get those, and that is through a precise
low-yield nuclear weapon."

Setting aside the moral and political implications of these remarks,
perhaps the kindest thing one can say about them is that possibly they
were delivered in ignorance of the underlying technical realities. A
"low-yield" nuclear weapon that can destroy deep underground targets does
not exist and cannot be developed using the known laws of physics. To
destroy a command center buried 600 feet deep under layers of hard rock,
for example, would require a nuclear weapon with a yield in the range of
300 to 1,000 kilotons (depending on the depth of penetration), even if the
target's location were known and the weapon's delivery was dead on the
intended aimpoint. Such a weapon would cover an area of 1,900 to 4,800
square kilometers with potentially lethal fallout and produce hundreds of
thousands of civilian casualties.

It appears that these gentlemen of the Senate simply have no clue what
they're talking about. It does indeed focus the mind to consider what sort
of national policy they and their like-minded cohorts will approve in the
future.

Here's an even scarier thought: What are the odds that the man with his
finger on the button shares their views?

Christopher Paine is a senior analyst in the Natural Resources Defense
Council nuclear program.