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The following article first appeared in the Indianapolis Star.The copy of the article is a "fair use" for educational purposes. This website has no authority to grant permission to reprint this article. We reformat onto a separate web page because links to newspapers are unstable as stories are moved into the paper's archives.
Breaking the taboo on nuclear strikes
by David Keppel
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davidkeppel@earthlink.net
February 16, 2003
The Iraq debate centers on whether Saddam Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction. Another question, though muted, is just as pressing: Is it possible that President Bush will break the taboo on nuclear strikes that has existed since Harry Truman used atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
In 1991, on the eve of the Persian Gulf War, Secretary of State James Baker wrote to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, warning that Iraq could expect "the strongest possible response" if it used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces or Israel. Baker's unmistakable nuclear threat apparently succeeded: Saddam Hussein accepted defeat over Kuwait without unleashing his then-formidable chemical and biological arsenal.
Last December, with a new war against Iraq on the horizon, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice issued a new nuclear threat. In a paper titled "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction," Rice warned that the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons against any nation using chemical or biological weapons. This threat confirms the doctrine in the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which names Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Libya and China as potential U.S. nuclear targets.
This policy violates the U.S. commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not to threaten non-nuclear states with nuclear attack. Its defenders say that a credible U.S. nuclear threat might deter Iraq from using any remaining chemical or biological weapons if Bush launches an invasion.
A threat is credible, of course, only if you appear ready to carry it out. Bush does. The United States has nuclear warheads -- the B-61 Mod-7 gravity bomb and the rocket-assisted B-61-11 "bunker buster" -- ready for the task. If a corneredHussein used chemical or biological weapons, Bush might feel he had to launch a nuclear strike to preserve the credibility of deterrence in future.
Will deterrence work? Irony surrounds this question. Bush's argument for preventive U.S. war on Iraq is that Hussein is irrational and cannot be deterred. Bush rejects containment and toughened inspections because, as he said in his State of the Union address, he refuses to risk the security of the American people on Hussein's sanity.
If Bush is right that Hussein is too irrational to back down on an ordinary day, how can the president risk a nuclear war on Hussein's restraint under U.S. attack? The 1991 U.S. nuclear deterrence worked precisely because that war was limited to driving Iraq out of Kuwait. But today's war aims at nothing less than regime change. This time Hussein has nothing to lose.
The effect of U.S. nuclear weapons falling on an Arab nation would be incalculable. Nuclear terrorism against the United States would be an eventual certainty. And other nuclear powers would take note: India might attack Pakistan, threatening South Asia's population of more than 1 billion.
Perhaps, as military affairs analyst William Arkin suggests in a Los Angeles Times article on the "nuclear option" in Iraq, Bush's nuclear strategy reaches beyond deterrence to pre-emption.
Some Pentagon planners advocate using nuclear weapons in a first strike to destroy buried chemical or biological weapons. They claim that nuclear weapons would be especially effective in neutralizing pathogens. They also maintain that earth-penetrating nuclear warheads would release little radioactivity. Others fear that the burrowing nuclear warhead would drive up a plume of radioactive dust that could contaminate millions.
As Bush launches what may be a war of pre-emption, few Americans know that his administration has undermined or scuttled virtually every arms control agreement designed to limit weapons of mass destruction on a global basis.
He has shattered decades of effort to strengthen verification of the Biological Weapons Convention, withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, left in doubt the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 1945, President Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons swiftly ended World War II but opened an age of atomic rivalry. Today, another president appears ready to go first with nuclear weapons, if not against Iraq, then against North Korea, one day Iran, or China over Taiwan. The American people do not want Iraq to be the inaugural war for a doctrine that would bring chaos to the world and discredit to our nation.
David Keppel is a writer and peace activist who lives in Bloomington. He is a member of the advisory boards of The Council for Responsible Genetics (Cambridge, Mass.) and Peace Action (Washington, D.C.). He is a featured contributor to http://grassrootspeace.org and MoveOn (http://www.moveon.org).
Page created February 20, 2003 by Charlie Jenks