U.S. nuclear arms risk-taking

by Frank Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times, April 25, 1995

Question: Would you agree to scrap the U.S. nuclear
deterrent, or at least commit to do so, under present and
foreseeable world conditions? Those conditions include
the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to
some of the most dangerous nations on Earth. Worse yet,
it is now possible for such nations to acquire the
ingredients for nuclear weapons – and perhaps even the
weapons themselves – by simply buying them, thus skipping
the complex, time-consuming and hard-to-conceal process
of manufacturing them.

In other words, would you be in favor of a strategic
situation in which the United States had no nuclear
weapons and others – for example, Iraq, North Korea,
China and Russia – probably would? My guess is that few
Americans would support such a proposition. Yet, it is
the predictable outcome of steps now being taken by the
Clinton administration – both unilaterally and as part of
its effort to garner international support for the
indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT).

Any lingering doubts that the administration is
committed to a U.S. “denuclearization” agenda
were eliminated with The Washington Post’s recent
publication of a voluminous, six-part paean to this
policy’s principal bureaucratic proponents. Published on
the eve of the NPT review conference now under way in New
York, this series underscored the extent to which
denuclearizers now hold sway in the Clinton Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency, Energy Department and Pentagon.
The Post report confirmed that the anti-nuclear policies
being promulgated are resulting essentially in the
shutdown of the infrastructure for manufacturing and
maintaining America’s nuclear deterrent. Increasingly,
its critical functions are going unperformed, its
resources diverted to non-defense tasks and its skilled
work force dissipated.

The fact that other countries are not following suit
gives rise to a natty problem: At some point, this
denuclearization policy is going to be seen for what it
is – reckless, unilateral U.S. disarmament. In truth, it
is appalling that neither the Democrat-controlled 103rd
Congress nor the Republican-controlled 104th has taken
the administration to task for an agenda that will, in
due course, render the American nuclear deterrent
unsustainable.

To obscure the fundamentally unilateral nature of its
program and to forestall congressional challenges, the
denuclearizers are making common cause with developing
nations and others who share their desire to see the
United States driven to disarm. The vehicle for
accomplishing this is the Non-Proliferation Treaty review
conference. The administration is allowing itself to be
extorted into making new commitments inimical to the U.S.
nuclear deterrent in exchange for others’ agreement to
extend the NPT indefinitely. According to a report
published in the New York Times last Sunday, the quid
will be an American commitment to “reduce nuclear
arsenals, complete a comprehensive test ban, encourage
the creation of nuclear free regions [around the world],
provide binding security assurances for nations without
nuclear arms and move toward a cutoff in the production
of weapons-grade nuclear materials.”

Before the United States is pushed by these
undertakings and other Clinton initiatives any closer to
denuclearization, adult supervision must be urgently
brought to bear. A good start was made last month by one
of this century’s most distinguished public servants,
former Secretary of Defense and Energy and CIA Director
James Schlesinger. On March 14, he told the Senate
Government Affairs Committee:

“It is essential fully to protect the U.S.
nuclear deterrent. I cannot overstate the importance
of such measures – for some lose sight of this
essential element in the desire to assuage the
desires of others. There is a good deal of talk about
eliminating the ‘discrimination’ between weapons
states and non-weapons states, ultimately eliminating
nuclear stockpiles, further reducing such weapons at
this time, etc.

“It is important to be clear that the
distinction between weapons states and non-weapons
states is not going to be eliminated. Nuclear
weapons, moreover, will be with us for the indefinite
future.

“Some of the non-aligned states would have us
pretend that these simple realities do not exist.
They demand that the United States make commitments –
purely abstract commitments — regarding
non-discrimination, elimination of nuclear weapons,
and so on,” Mr. Schlesinger said.

“It is necessary to put to such nations the
question whether it is really in their interest for
the United States precipitously to weaken its own
deterrent. . . . It is in the interest of all the
nations that desire stability for the United States
to continue to have a deterrent sufficiently
impressive to deter weapons use by other states.

“The game of flagellating the United States
in disarmament conferences is one to which many
diplomats from the Third World became habituated
during the Cold War. It is time to end that
game,” Mr. Schlesinger said. “It is also
time to curb the tendency to satisfy these demands by
rummaging through our own nuclear deterrent to see
what we can throw overboard without doing too much
damage.”

As Congress returns from its Easter recess, it must
come to grips with the fact there is a growing potential
for lethal attacks against American citizens – attacks
that will make the horrible carnage inflicted by a small
bomb in Oklahoma appear trivial by comparison. If it
fails to do so, the legislative branch may find the
Clinton administration has catastrophically eroded the
contribution that a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent might
make to avoiding such tragedies.