A Policy of Less Ambiguity, More Pointed Threat Is Urged
Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York have invigorated national security strategists inside and outside the government who favor using nuclear arms to deter and respond to chemical or biological attacks.
Conservatives outside the administration have been calling on the administration to make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack. This would change a long-standing U.S. policy of refusing to rule in or rule out use of nuclear weapons in the event of such an attack.
So far, at least, senior Bush administration officials have maintained this policy of deliberate ambiguity, though some administration figures appear to be sympathetic to a change that would entail a more specific threat.
A report issued in January by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) declared that "U.S. nuclear weapons may be necessary" to deter regional powers from using weapons of mass destruction or for "providing unique targeting capabilities" including buried or biological weapons targets. "Under certain circumstances, very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries," it said.
Among the report's authors were Stephen Hadley, now President Bush's deputy national security adviser, Robert G. Joseph, the head of proliferation strategy at the National Security Council, and Stephen A. Cambone and William Schneider Jr., key Bush defense advisers.
Proponents said last month's attacks on New York and Washington affirm their views. "September 11 really underscores the need to look at a full range of flexible options," said David Smith, a defense consultant who was an author of the NIPP report. "What we were trying to get at there is we don't believe the current arsenal of the United States is persuasively deterrent to all comers."
Many Bush administration officials have endorsed the notion of switching to smaller nuclear arms that could be used for, among other things, hitting chemical and biological weapons sites and targeting figures, such as Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, who hide in deep underground bunkers.
A report in June 2000 by Stephen Younger, who has been named to head the Defense Department's Threat Reduction Agency, called for smaller nuclear weapons as part of a "fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons."
Though a shift in the arsenal would take years to implement, an early sign will be the Nuclear Posture Review underway in the Pentagon and due to Congress by year's end. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, during his confirmation hearing Sept. 13, said deterrence against weapons of mass destruction "is a critical component" of the review. He also pointed out that the military already has "a number of low-yield weapons in the current stockpile."
Another author of the NIPP study, Southwest Missouri State University's William R. Van Cleave, said the review will argue "that we need to regain some capability for some low-yield [nuclear] weapons and particularly earth-penetrating low-yield weapons." Van Cleave, whose colleague, J.D. Crouch, is now assistant undersecretary of defense for international security policy, said some Bush advisers "believe we have marginalized nuclear weapons too much. We have removed them from extended deterrence too much."
Among his friends in the administration, Van Cleave said, "there's a sentiment for the view the way I expressed it."
For the last decade or so, U.S. leaders have been deliberately ambiguous about using nuclear weapons to respond to a chemical and biological threat. Then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said in December 1990 that "were Saddam Hussein foolish enough to use weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. response would be absolutely overwhelming and it would be devastating." Administration officials later said Cheney wasn't implying a nuclear threat.
Others defend the ambiguous nature of U.S. policy. "We've purposefully avoided drawing bright lines in the past about when we might use nuclear weapons," said a former senior Clinton administration official. "If we change that now, it would upset a lot of our core NATO allies, not to mention others in the coalition against terrorism we're trying to build."
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared that "the United States will not use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear weapon state" that is party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, unless the United States or its interests are attacked "by such a state allied to a nuclear weapon state." According to the State Department, this declaration has been reaffirmed by every successive administration.
So far in the current crisis, top administration officials have continued the ambiguous wording of threats. Asked by Fox News on Sunday whether it would be reasonable for the United States to respond to a chemical or biological attack with nuclear weapons, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said: "I'm not going to talk about the operations that might be considered by the Defense Department and the president. But we're going to do everything we can to defend the United States."
A week earlier, on CBS News's "Face the Nation," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked if he had ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in the current conflict, replied that the country had never ruled out a first nuclear strike. "What we need to do, it seems to me, as a country, is to recognize how different this situation is, and then the traditional -- think of it, the deterrence that worked in the Cold War didn't work," he said.
Some arms control experts believe the Bush administration's statements so far already go beyond past administrations' ambiguity. "That is an implied threat," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "They've crossed the line or they're at the line by implying the possible use."
Opponents said nuclear threats will encourage nuclear proliferation and worry friendly governments. "It would create its own crisis, fracture the alliance and have no military purpose," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.