‘Penetrating’: Clinton’s ‘New’ Nuclear Weapon Underscores Continuing Need for Nuclear Deterrence, Danger of the C.T.B.

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s Washington
Post Outlook Section featured a crie
de coeur about the recent deployment
of a B-61 nuclear bomb modified to
penetrate tens of meters into the earth
and destroy hardened underground bunkers.
Written by an anti-nuclear activist, the
article — entitled “The Birth of a
New Bomb: Shades of Dr. Strangelove! Will
We Learn to Love the B61-11?” —
anguishes over the possibility that even
a Clinton Administration committed to
“denuclearization” may have
found it necessary to retain and enhance
the Nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

In so doing, Greg Mello has helped
illuminate the internal contradictions of
an Administration that simultaneously: 1)
proclaims its commitment to effective
nuclear deterrence (usually in the
context of opposing missile defenses) and
2) pursues arms control policies and
programmatic actions largely antithetical
to maintaining the credibility of the
American deterrent. Mello clearly hopes
that these contradictions will be
resolved by fully implementing the
Clinton Administration’s denuclearization
policy.⁽¹⁾
The Center for Security Policy,
however, believes that U.S. national
security dictates that the present
incoherence be resolved in favor of
preserving critical military capabilities
— and abandoning policies that will make
it increasingly difficult, if not
impossible, to do so.

Treaties Uber
Peace Through Strength

The concluding section of Mello’s
article (emphasis added throughout)
quotes a January 1996 statement made by
Clinton Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency Director John Holum:

“‘…Let there be no mistake
— the Comprehensive Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty (CTBT) will help
impede the spread of nuclear
weapons. But its great practical
impact will also be for arms
control — to end
development of advanced new
weapons and keep new military
applications from emerging.'”

Mello adds caustically:

“The B61-11 may be a mere
modification, a new shell for an
older physics package. It may not
be the kind of exotic new weapon
that Holum listed [e.g.,
“nuclear-explosion-pumped
X-ray lasers, nuclear shotguns,
enhanced electromagnetic pulse
weapons, microwave weapons and
enhanced radiation
weapons].” But it is
a weapon with a new capability.
Should the need arise, it will
allow U.S. military forces — to
borrow Holum’s words — to ‘focus
the release of energy with
greater precision’ in a ‘new
military application.’

“Why was it developed and
deployed now? That’s a question
the Clinton Administration needs
to answer. Because the
real ‘collateral damage’ of new
weapons like the B61-11 is likely
to occur not in wartime, but much
sooner, through devaluation of
the treaties and commitments upon
which the fragile
non-proliferation regime
rests.”

Deterrence 101

The answer to why the Clinton Administration
developed and deployed the B61 at this
time should be obvious: Such a weapon is
urgently needed since countries like
Russia, China, Iraq, Libya, Iran and
North Korea have been building hardened
underground command and control
facilities, leadership bunkers, factories
for weapons of mass destruction and
tunnels to protect missiles and submarine
forces. The capacity to hold such
facilities at risk may be critical to
deterring future aggression from one or
more of those states and to defeating
such aggression should it occur.

Mello’s condemnation of the B61
program sharpens the question the U.S.
Senate may shortly have to answer: Can
the United States safely and
permanently deny itself nuclear
capabilities that may be essential to its
future security in order to comply with
“the spirit” of agreements like
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) —
agreements whose unverifiability and
unenforceability are such that they will
not measurably impede nuclear
proliferation among countries of concern?

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
welcomes the modification of the B61 and
its introduction into the U.S. arsenal.
While it is unrealistic to expect that
the world will necessarily be made into a
safe place for American interests by dint
of the deployment of this weapon (or any
other), the price of threatening those
interests has just increased
dramatically. Historically, such a
reality has tended to discourage
conflict.

By contrast, arms control treaties of
limited or negligible effectiveness —
like the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the
Chemical Weapons Convention and the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — tend to
create a false sense of security. The
result often is: a lessening of the
military preparedness of law-abiding
states like the U.S.; the covert
accumulation of threatening capabilities
by those who do not respect international
law; and perceived opportunities for the
coercive use of force by the latter
against the former. href=”97-D75.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

The B61 modification program
underscores the abiding U.S. requirement
to field nuclear weapons that are
effective deterrents. If it is to be able
to do so for the foreseeable future, the
United States will be required both to
modify and upgrade existing designs (like
the B-61) and introduce new ones (which
will require periodic underground
testing).

The fact that the Clinton
Administration has, with the B61
modification program, effectively
repudiated the logic of its position on
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty should
prompt the Republican-controlled Senate
now to follow through on the logic of the
GOP platform for the 1996 campaign:

“To cope with the
proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, the United States
will have to deter the threat or
use of weapons of mass
destruction by rogue states.
This in turn will require the
continuing maintenance and
development of nuclear weapons
and their periodic testing. The
Clinton Administration’s proposed
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT) is inconsistent with
American security interests.“

– 30 –

1.
For more on this policy, see the
Center’s Transition Brief
entitled Fiddling While The
Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Complex ‘Burns’
Down: O’Leary’s Last Denuclearization
Shot? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-T_120″>No. 96-T 120,
29 November 1996).

2. The
Administration has only exacerbated this
danger with its mixed signals about the
circumstances under which it would
authorize the use of nuclear weapons
against states like Libya or North Korea.