BUSH’S NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT INITIATIVES: TOO CLEVER BY HALF?

(Washington, D.C.): Last night,
President Bush announced the most
sweeping changes to the U.S. nuclear
deterrent posture to be taken at one time
since the dawn of the nuclear age. In so
doing, he has attempted: to make
virtue of necessity; to coopt through
preemptive action similar or even more
ambitious initiatives by Democrats at
home and/or allies abroad; and to secure
corresponding, highly desirable changes
in the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

It very much remains to be seen
whether Mr. Bush’s gambit will accomplish
these purposes. What it will do,
however, is define the boundary
conditions within which U.S. nuclear
forces are likely to have to operate for
the foreseeable future. To some
extent, it does so in ways that are
extremely positive — or at least reasonable
under the circumstances and
tolerable. In other ways, however, the
Bush initiative directs changes in force
structure and operations that will be
exceedingly difficult politically (if not
technically) to reverse should
circumstances change.

These positive and negative aspects of
the President’s plan warrant close
examination.

The President’s Motivations

Virtue of Necessity:
President Bush appears to have taken a
page from Mikhail Gorbachev’s playbook
insofar as he has tried to pocket credit
for taking an initiative when he is, to a
considerable degree, simply acceding to
the inevitable. As a result of
decades of neglect and deferred or
terminated modernization programs, much
of the Department of Energy weapons
complex and various elements of the U.S.
nuclear arsenal it supports are
functionally obsolete.
Consequently, the President’s decision to
eliminate short-range nuclear artillery
shells and ballistic missiles and various
sea-based tactical nuclear weapons (e.g.,
the ASROC and SUBROC systems) represents
less of a sacrifice in terms of
deployed military capability than
might otherwise appear to be the case.

To be sure, the MX and Midgetman
mobile ICBM programs and the Short-Range
Attack Missile (SRAM) which the President
has chosen to cancel would have
represented substantial improvements in
present capabilities. Still, each of
these systems were in trouble politically
or technically or both. For example, the
MX rail-mobile program was effectively
terminated by the Senate the day
before the President’s announcement.

Coopting Democrats and
Allies: There is some truth
to the point made by Senate Majority
Leader George Mitchell in the Democrats’
response to the Bush announcement: In
several respects, the proposal simply
expropriates initiatives offered in the
past by opposition figures like Sens. Jim
Sasser (who opposed the rail-mobile MX),
Sam Nunn (who has championed various
“nuclear risk-reduction”
measures) and Al Gore (who proposed
eliminating ICBMs with multiple warheads
— known as MIRVed missiles — in favor
of single-warheaded systems).

It is equally true that U.S. allies
have, with increasing insistence, sought
to eliminate ground-launched nuclear
weapons from Europe and nuclear arms from
American ships paying visits to or
homeported in their coastal cities. While
the United States had successfully
resisted this pressure to date and
probably could have continued to do so
for at least some time into the future,
acquiescing to it will remove an irritant
in relations with these allies —
something the Bush Administration is ever
wont to do.

Challenging the Soviets:
Clearly, in taking these steps, the
President had very much in mind
eliminating pretexts for Soviet
authorities to resist taking steps in their
interest — and ours. These
include efforts: to consolidate and
eliminate the vast Soviet arsenal of
tactical nuclear weapons (e.g.,
land-based artillery shells, short-range
ballistic missile warheads, land-mines
and nuclear armed air-defense weapons and
sea-based nuclear warheads, depth charges
and bombs); to end as many as six MIRVed
ICBM modernization programs; to vitiate
the mobility of dangerous rail-launched
SS-24 and road-mobile SS-25 missiles; and
to tighten up controls on all Soviet
nuclear forces.

The Positive Aspects

Unilateral Action:
The most encouraging element of this
initiative is that it does not, by and
large, contemplate negotiations with the
leadership of the former Soviet Union.
Instead, the President has
generally acted unilaterally —
challenging the Soviets to respond in
kind, rather than calling for new arms
control negotiations to formalize the
arrangement. A notable exception is his
proposal for de-MIRVing the two sides’
ICBM forces.

The truth of the matter is that monitoring
Soviet compliance with much of what he is
proposing would be exceedingly difficult
if not impossible. This is
especially true of sea-based and
land-based tactical nuclear forces. As a
general principal, it is far better for
the United States to do what is in its
interest to do, rather than to get
ensnared in problematic negotiations —
and in the ill-advised and ultimately
ineffectual verification regimes that
tend to emerge therefrom.

By not making these steps conditional
upon negotiations, moreover, the
President has largely eliminated an
oft-cited rationale for supporting the
central authorities of the former Soviet
Union — namely, that they are a vital
arms control negotiating partner.
This consideration for too long was used
to justify the Bush Administration’s
over-investment in the Gorbachev regime;
it should not be allowed to do so now.

Important Programmatic
Commitments: As part of his
package of disarmament initiatives,
President Bush pledged to pursue a number
of key programmatic steps. These
explicitly include (or implicitly entail)
the following:

• A call for immediate
  concrete steps to deploy
  limited defenses;
• A reiteration of the need for
  full funding of the B-2
  bomber and the SDI program
  in the wake of the recommended
  changes;
• A statement that a viable
  nuclear deterrent would
  continue to be required, implying
  that continued modernization,
  fixes to the Department of Energy
  weapons complex and nuclear
  testing would be programmed;
• A commitment to proceed
  with deployment of a new,
  single-warheaded small ICBM in
  fixed silos; and
• A reaffirmation that an air-launched
  deterrent would remain essential
  for NATO deterrence —
  implying the need for a
  modernized missile to be deployed
  aboard aircraft in Europe.

The Negative Aspects

Unfortunately, some of President
Bush’s intentions and the positive
aspects of his proposal may be
compromised, perhaps even thwarted, by
other elements of his initiative:

• Inevitably, the President has
  created massive political — if
  not insurmountable technical —
  obstacles to resuming anything
  akin to the status quo ante
  U.S. nuclear posture should it be
  deemed necessary to do so. In
  recent months, he has taken a
  series of steps (e.g.,
  standing-down airborne command
  and control aircraft and early
  warning systems) that have
  measurably increased the United
  States’ vulnerability to
  preemptive nuclear attack.
  Eliminating alert bombers greatly
  adds to that vulnerability.
  (What is more, it is highly
  debatable whether Soviet mobiles
  ICBMs being returned to garrison
  is a comparable step. After all, they
  can be as easily fired, arguably
  more accurately so, from there.)
• While such a posture may be
  deemed an acceptable risk under
  present circumstances, any future
  decision to restore these
  capabilities will be made that
  much more difficult by the
  precedent established by Mr.
  Bush. This is likely to prove to
  be the case even with respect
  to any decision to reverse these
  actions in the event the Soviets
  do not follow suit — a
  threat made yesterday by a
  “senior Administration
  official” briefing reporters
  on the President’s initiative.
• Various aspects of the
  Bush disarmament plan are at
  cross-purposes with other
  elements and will likely work to
  undermine support for the latter.
  For example:
• Standing-down bombers on
  alert and canceling SRAM
  will likely be cited as
  further eroding the case
  for the B-2;
• Canceling SRAM and
  storing bomber-weapons —
  to say nothing of
  eliminating all other TNF
  — will likely greatly
  complicate the effort to
  field an air-launched
  deterrent for NATO;
• Calling for a ban on
  land-based MIRVs will
  inevitably imperil the
  most survivable U.S.
  strategic forces —
  heavily MIRVed
  sea-launched ballistic
  missiles;
• Dismantling large numbers
  of existing nuclear
  weapons and scrapping
  plans for most new ones
  will probably add to the
  resistance to invest
  necessary resources in
  rehabilitating the DOE
  weapons complex. Without
  such investment, however,
  the viability of the U.S.
  nuclear deterrent over
  time cannot be assured.
• The decision to establish
  that, “under normal
  circumstances,” U.S. Navy
  ships will be “nuclear
  free” is probably
  ill-advised strategically.
  Tactical nuclear weapons at sea
  have long been viewed as a
  necessary deterrent to the
  possibility of the Soviet navy’s
  use of such weapons against
  American naval assets — like
  carrier battle groups — which
  are attractive targets for that
  use. Since the United States is
  unlikely to be able to tell
  whether all Soviet tactical nukes
  have been eliminated, this
  action could significantly add to
  the incentives for preemptive
  nuclear attack against the U.S.
  fleet in any future conflict.
• In addition, the decision to make
  U.S. Navy vessels non-nuclear
  most of the time, while
  preserving the option to
  reintroduce nuclear weapons under
  extraordinary circumstances, is
  sure to have serious
  repercussions for the
  long-standing American
  “neither-confirm-nor-deny”
  policy concerning the presence of
  such weapons. This, in turn, will
  likely adversely affect the
  Navy’s port visits, homeporting
  and perhaps even transit rights
  in various parts of the world.

• Particularly ill-considered is
  the decision to remove
  nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise
  missiles from ships and
  submarines. These
  have never been considered
  tactical nuclear weapons.
  They are, rather, an important
  element of the U.S. strategic
  reserve — singularly survivable
  given their widespread
  deployment, and therefore highly
  credible deterrent forces.

Unknowns

Finally,
there are several further uncertainties
that bear upon the desirability of the
President’s nuclear disarmament
initiatives. In addition to the important
question of how the Soviets will really
respond — not to be confused with their
rhetorical response — and whether the
United States will be able to undo its
decision if they do not are at
least two further issues:

• To the extent the Bush proposal does
  involve negotiations with Soviet
  officials, with whom will the
  United States negotiate? Will it
  try to deal exclusively or even
  principally with the discredited
  center or will it hold
  discussions concerning nuclear
  safety, handling, dismantling and
  control with the republics
  as well? Importantly, our
  interests may be better served by
  dealing primarily with the latter
  — at least as an essential
  partner in these matters with the
  reconfigured Moscow center.
• Senator Mitchell announced last
  night that Democrats would
  support the President’s
  initiative: Does that mean in
  its entirety — including
  support for B-2, SDI deployment
  and DOE weapons complex renewal
  — or does it mean they intend to
  “pick the raisins out of the
  cake,” agreeing to cut
  forces the President proposes to
  eliminate but refusing to fund
  those he maintains are all the
  more necessary in light of these
  steps? If the latter, what are
  the implications for vital U.S.
  security interests of such a
  piecemeal approach to the
  President’s package?

Conclusion

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the Congress should
carefully weigh the aforementioned
concerns and uncertainties before it
agrees to provide the requisite funding
and such legislative authority as might
be necessary. It calls for hearings to be
urgently held on this matter so as to
ensure that, where appropriate, the full
benefit of the positive aspects of the
President’s proposals might be realized.