|
International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
 |
 |
|
In 1991, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, US General Colin Powell stated: "You've got to step aside from the context we've been using for the past 40 years, that you base military planning against a specific threat. We no longer have the luxury of having a threat to plan for. What we plan for is that we're a super power. We are the major player on the world stage with responsibilities and interests around the world." Seven years later, despite massive geopolitical transformations, the US continues its quest for nuclear superiority and global military dominance. Since the end of World War II, the US has fostered the myth of nuclear "deterrence," while relying on the threatened first use of nuclear weapons to back up a foreign policy based on intimidation and intervention.
The nuclear tests by India and Pakistan briefly put the fear of nuclear war back on the front page, and demonstrated the fragility of the non-proliferation regime. But a deeper look reveals the global weakness of a hypocritical "do as we say, not as we do" US nuclear posture, and calls into question the basic premises of official US nonproliferation policy.
In his May 16 weekly radio address, President Clinton told the American people: "India has pursued this course at a time when most nations are working hard to leave the terror of the nuclear age behind." This statement is completely at odds with current US policy. Contrary to its public pronouncements, the US is modernizing and upgrading its nuclear forces and renewing its commitment to reliance on nuclear weapons, a reality which threatens the long-term viability of both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Presidential Decision Directive 60 (PDD), signed last December, reaffirms the fundamental elements of US nuclear doctrine since World War II. According to newspaper accounts, the PDD re-commits the US to policies of threatened first use and threatened massive retaliation, and affirms that the US will continue to rely on nuclear arms as a cornerstone of its national security for the "indefinite future." In addition, the PDD reportedly contemplates nuclear retaliation against the use of chemical and biological arms - a policy called "counterprolifer-ation."
The PDD is backed by a major new program to upgrade the US nuclear weapons infrastructure. The so-called "Stockpile Stewardship" program is intended to retain "all historical capabilities of the weapons laboratories, industrial plants and the Nevada Test Site," without underground testing. Stockpile Stewardship will provide design capabilities potentially greater than those available during the Cold War. It encompasses a test site ready to rapidly resume full scale underground testing and a substantial nuclear warhead production capacity, computer-integrated with new, high-tech, experimental laboratory facilities. In addition to ensuring the "safety and reliability" of the "enduring" arsenal, Stockpile Stewardship is officially and explicitly intended to maintain the capability to design and develop new weapons and to train a new generation of nuclear weapons designers. Over the next decade, the US plans to invest $45 billion in this program — an amount, in inflation-adjusted dollars, well above the Cold War annual spending average for nuclear weapons research, development, testing, and production.
Stockpile Stewardship will allow nuclear weapons development to continue without full-scale underground tests. Instead, scientists will simulate nuclear tests using the world's fastest supercomputers and data collected from more than 1000 past tests, coupled with new diagnostic information. This information will be obtained from inertial confinement fusion facilities, pulsed power fusion experiments, above-ground hydrodynamic explosions, and subcritical "zero yield" tests conducted deep underground at the Nevada Test Site. These tests involve hundreds of pounds of high explosive material and up to several pounds of weapon-grade plutonium. They are called "subcritical" because they do not generate self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions with measurable nuclear yields. The US claims that subcritical tests don't violate the CTBT, which does not define a nuclear test. But the CTBT obligates the US "not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion." In view of US condemnation of India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests, the subcritical tests, which clearly violate the spirit of the CTBT, should be called "hypocritical" tests. Since signing the CTBT in September 1996, the US has conducted four subcritical tests. The next one, code-named "Cimarron," is expected in November.
Some of the key Stockpile Stewardship technologies have been developed as "dual-use" scientific facilities that can be used for both high energy physics research and bomb science. The prime example is the multi-billion dollar, stadium-sized National Ignition Facility (NIF), presently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The NIF is designed to focus 192 powerful laser beams onto a pea-sized capsule containing deuterium and tritium, forcing the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen to combine through compression, and causing a brief thermonuclear explosion that will create extremely high temperatures approaching those found in full scale underground nuclear tests. If it works, "ignition" will be achieved, producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction. NIF will generate sizeable explosions, central to Stockpile Stewardship. This raises serious questions about whether NIF - and the virtually identical "Projet Megajoule" under construction in France - violates the letter of the CTBT.
The dangerous development and spread of these technologies is not limited to the declared nuclear weapon states, each of which has its own version of Stockpile Stewardship. Any country with an advanced inertial confinement fusion program has the capability to rapidly develop a sophisticated hydrogen bomb. Since the 1970's, India's weapons labs have structed their own "stockpile stewardship" program, complete with inertial confinement fusion, thus allowing their designers to develop sophisticated weapons prior to "proof" testing. Much like the final French tests in the Pacific, the Indian government announced that its tests served the purpose of generating sufficient data to allow scientists to design and deploy weapons in confidence, using lab experiments and supercomputers, without the need for underground explosions. Not surprisingly, this capability was obtained with US assistance. Between 1994 and 1996, over 800 Indian scientists visited the US nuclear weapons laboratories. And, it was reported shortly after the May tests that IBM had sold an advanced supercomputer capable of running simulations necessary to develop nuclear weapons "codes" to a suspected Indian nuclear weapons research facility.
The South Asian tests warn of a frightening trend, in which developing nuclear powers can utilize sophisticated laboratory research and "dual-use" technologies to design and deploy nuclear weapons with a minimum number of explosions.
The US Stockpile Stewardship program is the result of a "devil's bargain." It is the price exacted by the nuclear weapons laboratories in exchange for their acceptance of a ban on full scale underground tests. It is being widely promoted as an essential condition for Senate ratification of the CTBT, a stated objective of official US non-proliferation policy. However, this "deal" may actually weaken prospects for stemming the spread of nuclear weapons.
When the NPT was originally negotiated, a two-part bargain was struck to induce the non-nuclear weapon states to forswear nuclear weapons. First, the nuclear weapon states promised in Article IV to assist the non-nuclear weapon states with the development of nuclear power, an unfortunate commitment that promoted the very proliferation the NPT was intended to prevent. Second, the nuclear weapon states promised in Article VI to negotiate the cessation of the nuclear arms race and the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. This bargain was reaffirmed in the 1995 decision to indefinitely extend the Treaty. Pursuant to Article VI, the nuclear weapon states agreed to conclude a CTBT by 1996 and to pursue "systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons."
These commitments were reinforced and expanded by the historic 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. In what is now the authoritative interpretation of Article VI, the Court held unanimously that "there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control."
During the Cold War, the NPT was largely ignored by the nuclear weapon states. Now, in the logic of "counterpro-liferation," the US military establishment has turned the Treaty's original logic upside down. Possible proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction has become a principal rationale for the US to maintain and upgrade its own nuclear forces. This represents an expansion, rather than a reduction, of the role of nuclear weapons and directly contradicts the Article VI disarmament obligation.
When President Clinton submitted the CTBT to the Senate for ratification over a year ago, his transmittal letter made clear that his endorsement of the Treaty was conditioned on Senate support for the Stockpile Stewardship program as a central requirement of "national security strategy" premised on maintenance of a robust nuclear "deterrent."
The CTBT has been long-sought in the belief that it would constitute an effective disarmament measure. However, conditioning adoption of the Treaty on the establishment of the Stockpile Stewardship program in order to compensate for the loss of underground testing demonstrates a profound US disregard for global and historical expectations of the CTBT. This may serve in the long term to stimulate the spread of nuclear weapons, directly, through the development and spread of technology and information, and indirectly, by legitimizing continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons.
Today, US Trident submarines patrol the world's oceans at Cold War levels. Armed with hundreds of unimaginably powerful nuclear weapons, they remain ready to strike targets around the globe in a matter of minutes. The US weapons laboratories are currently working on upgrades to the Trident warheads and missiles. These upgrades may allow improvement in accuracy for large portions of the submarine-launched ballistic missile force. During the Cold War, this kind of "upgrading" raised fears of a disabling "first strike" and was a driving force in the arms race. Russia, France, the UK and China are upgrading their strategic and tactical nuclear forces as well.
The US plans to maintain indefinitely a nuclear arsenal of more than 10,000 intact warheads in various states of readiness, with thousands of additional plutonium "pits" in reserve. The size of this arsenal is not affected by the START process, which deals only with deployed "strategic," or long-range weapons. Even if START II is ratified by the Russian Duma — in doubt due to NATO expansion, US development of a Ballistic Missile Defense system, and political instabilities in Russia — in 2007 each side will retain some 3,500 deployed strategic weapons. The START III framework agreement would allow each side to maintain 2,000 or more deployed strategic nuclear weapons. At present, there are no formal arms reduction negotiations underway.
While US officials publicly proclaim that the CTBT will severely constrain the further development of nuclear weapons, it appears that the Pentagon has sufficient confidence in near-term Stockpile Stewardship capabilities to seriously consider developing and deploying modified weapons designs without underground testing. In fact, it has already done so. Existing facilities have been used to produce and deploy the first US nuclear weapon with improved military capabilities since 1989. The B61-11 is an earth penetrating gravity bomb with a variable yield ranging from 300 tons to over 300 kilotons TNT. The US claims that the B61-11 is not a "new" weapon because the physics package has not been changed. But in fact, it is a weapon with new military capabilities. And its use has already been threatened against Libya and Iraq in connection with alleged chemical and biological weapons-capabilities.
The world reeled when India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests. But just two months earlier, the US flight-tested the B61-11 in Alaska, using a depleted uranium warhead. Attempts by local tribes and environmental groups to focus national conattention on this US nuclear test fell on deaf ears. Other nuclear weapons projects reportedly underway include upgrades to MX warheads and strategic bombs, nuclear glide bombs, and — possibly — a nuclear warhead for theater defense missiles designed to intercept and incinerate biological and chemical warheads.
In addition, contingency plans are underway to allow US nuclear weapons production to quickly increase to "cold war levels of building." Modernized plutonium pit manufacturing capability will add to the 12,000 unused pits currently in storage and the 12,000 in the current weapon arsenal. In addition, the US is preparing to resume production of tritium, halted in 1988 for safety reasons. Yet the current store of tritium could supply a stockpile of 1,000 nuclear warheads for the next 50 years.
Such programs represent the anti-thesis of the NPT Article VI obligation to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament," which was unambiguously reaffirmed by the US in conjunction with the 1995 NPT extension decision. The reality is that Stockpile Stewardship is intended to ensure that nuclear disarmament does not occur as a consequence of the CTBT. Moreover, new nuclear weapons designs and improvements directly contravene the Article VI requirement "cessation of the nuclear arms race".
The US National Academy of Sciences, in its 1997 report, The Future of Nuclear Weapons, warned: "The absence of change in US nuclear posture and practice to reflect the dramatically altered post-Cold War conditions weakens the credibility of US leadership in non-proliferation efforts."
The most appropriate and effective response to the nuclear crisis in South Asia is for the US, the world's first and leading nuclear power, to commence, without further delay, negotiations on the global elimination of nuclear weapons - its legal obligation under the NPT. This should be coupled with immediate measures to reduce the very real danger of an intentional or accidental nuclear launch. Nuclear forces should be taken off "hair trigger" alert and withdrawn from deployment. Warheads should be separated from delivery vehicles. And Senate ratification of the CTBT should be linked to nuclear disarmament instead of being conditioned on the Stockpile Stewardship program. Maybe then the US would be in a position to convince India and Pakistan not to alert and deploy their own nuclear forces, and to join the CTBT and NPT.
Jacqueline Cabasso is the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, California, a founding member of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons. Address: 1440 Broadway, Suite 500, Oakland, CA 94612, USA;
tel +1(510)839-5877, fax: +1(510)839-5397, email wslf@igc.apc.org.
|
|
|