Dangerous Doctrine

A new strategic doctrine

Most of the Bush doctrine missions are not entirely new with the current Bush administration. Strategic deterrence was the cornerstone of U.S. nuclear policy throughout the Cold War. Extended deterrence, America's policy of extending its nuclear umbrella over its allies, was meant to assure them that they could rely on U.S. nuclear weapons rather than acquiring their own. Warfighting has also been a component of nuclear policy, although a much debated and controversial element. Dissuasion of states from procuring weapons through the demonstration of U.S. superiority was never a practical policy when dealing with major states such as the Soviet Union or China, which found complete U.S. dominance unacceptable. To the extent that dissuasion was able to limit or prevent nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons development around the world, it was done largely through negotiations and agreements–approaches now downplayed by the Bush administration.

If there is a new aspect to the Bush doctrine, it is that strategic policy now concentrates primarily on regional powers and emphasizes the possibility of preemptive action to disarm “rogue” states that possess WMD. In the administration's view, this shift in focus and in geopolitical circumstances opens the possibility for–indeed the necessity of–a more dynamic nuclear policy. According to the NPR, “Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope, and purpose will complement other military capabilities. The combination can provide the range of options needed to pose a credible deterrent to adversaries whose values and calculations of risk and of gain and loss may be very different from and more difficult to discern than those of past adversaries.”

The push for smaller, smarter nukes

The United States has more than 6,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons consisting of warheads delivered by long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), bombs, and cruise missiles. About 3,000 additional intact warheads are retained in reserve or inactive stockpiles. There are also a few hundred “tactical” (non-strategic) nuclear bombs carried by relatively short-range, dual-capable (conventional and nuclear) aircraft stationed in Europe and a few hundred submarine-launched cruise missiles kept in storage in the United States.

U.S. weapons reportedly have a wide range of yields. U.S. ballistic missiles carry only high-yield warheads (more than 100 kilotons), but some nuclear bombs and cruise missiles reportedly have flexible low-yield options, down to less than a kiloton. 1 The accuracies of U.S. strategic delivery systems are reportedly around 100 meters.

The NPR argues that the several thousand nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal will not be adequate to implement the Bush doctrine: “New capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply buried targets, to find and attack mobile and relocatable targets, to defeat chemical or biological agents, and to improve accuracy and limit collateral damage. Development of these capabilities, to include extensive research and timely fielding of new systems to address these challenges, are imperative to make the New Triad a reality.”

The administration apparently believes that if it can limit “collateral damage”–unintended death and injury to civilians and unintended property damage–nuclear use would be more politically acceptable and credible. Most weapons in the current arsenal would produce unacceptably large collateral damage, so the administration argues that new low-yield, high-accuracy nuclear weapons must be sought. To that end, the Bush administration has sought to authorize the weapons labs to renew previous programs to examine a broad range of new nuclear weapons concepts, including low-yield weapons.

The United States observes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty's prohibition on nuclear testing (although it has only signed, and not ratified, the treaty). If new weapons concepts are fully explored and militarily useful designs created, there is likely to be pressure to resume underground testing, because without testing, the United States would probably find it near-impossible to build and certify the safety and reliability of entirely new weapons. However, the administration insists its plans do not include new testing. If the test moratorium holds, new weapons would generally have to be based on old designs that have been tested in the past or on modifications of current weapons.

At this stage, there is apparently only one specific new nuclear weapon concept under consideration by the military–the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, designed to attack hard and deeply buried targets. The only earth-penetrating weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the B61-11, is of limited effectiveness, as it cannot penetrate very hard surfaces and survive.

Earth-penetrating weapons are now the primary focus of military interest, but it is likely that because the new doctrine recommends “nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope, and purpose,” the United States will want to consider low-yield nuclear weapons for use against a wide variety of above-ground military targets. For example, low-yield weapons specially designed to attack aboveground biological warfare storage facilities might be developed. Very small nuclear warheads for ballistic missile defense systems could also be reconsidered. More generally, new weapons might be useful in a warfighting role–to attack massed troops or mobile missiles and artillery, for example.

In many cases, low-yield nuclear weapons would require significant improvements in accuracy to be effective. Global Positioning Satellite systems that are now incorporated on many conventional munitions could be applied to nuclear bombs and cruise missiles, providing accuracies of around 10 meters or better. Very accurate ballistic missiles can in principle also be produced, but this would be complicated and require significant research and development.

Operational and strategic considerations

The use of even a small number of nuclear weapons (new or old) in a regional conflict would raise significant operational and strategic problems:

Low-yield weapons may be ineffective

The NPR identifies hard and deeply buried targets, chemical warfare agents, and biological warfare agents as target types that current weapons are unable to kill (or unable to kill without excessive collateral damage). However, new low-yield nuclear weapons may be just as ineffective at killing the target without excessive collateral damage.

Hard and deeply buried targets, sited often in urban or mountainous surroundings, are “an adversary's threatening and well-protected assets in structures ranging from hardened surface bunker complexes to deep tunnels,” according to the Defense Department. Most of these targets are from a few meters to many hundreds of meters below the surface. A recent Defense Intelligence Agency report puts the total of potential buried targets in the world at 1,400, most of them in the former Soviet Union. How many of those are hardened and deep underground is unknown. Most of the regional powers' buried targets are probably command and control centers that could also house their military and political leadership, or even chemical or bioweapon factories.

Many hard and deeply buried targets could be destroyed with current surface-burst nuclear weapons. However, because in many cases the yield would have to be very high, the collateral damage from blast, fires, radiation, and fallout could also be very high. These effects could be considerably reduced by using a nuclear weapon that can penetrate into the ground and then explode. An earth-penetrating weapon would deposit more of its energy into the ground shock wave, reducing the yield needed to kill a hardened underground target by a factor of 20 to 30 compared to a surface-burst weapon.

The production of an effective nuclear earth-penetrating weapon presents a serious challenge. If all the many technical difficulties in designing and employing such weapons can be overcome, moderate-yield weapons (5-10 kilotons) detonated underground within currently feasible penetration distances (a few meters in granite and up to 30 meters in soil) could be relatively effective against hardened underground facilities buried up to about 100 meters deep. But as the NPR notes, “for defeat of very deep or larger underground facilities, penetrating weapons with large yields would be needed to collapse the facility.” Presumably, this means hundreds of kilotons, if not more. It is likely that most countries, noting U.S. nuclear earth-penetrating weapon plans, will build their facilities much deeper–perhaps deep enough to put their destruction beyond the reach of even large-yield nuclear weapons.

Against biological or chemical agents stored underground, nuclear weapons would have to be detonated inside the bunker, since the agent is neutralized primarily by thermal effects from the explosion. Since the weapons are limited in penetration depth, they would at best be effective only against shallow-buried storage sites. Even then, precise intelligence on the facility location and design may be required to assure the destruction of all of the agent. This is also true for surface-storage sites. (Using larger nuclear weapons could compensate for some lack of information, but would cause more collateral damage.) If the heat and radioactivity do not destroy all the agent, it may disperse in the air in lethal doses.

One of the primary objectives of developing new low-yield weapons concepts is to reduce the collateral effects of nuclear explosions–fallout, blast, fires, and direct radiation. While many targets may be effectively destroyed with yields of a few kilotons, it is likely that many more will require tens of kilotons and some will require hundreds of kilotons, particularly if an opponent has the time to assume an effective responsive posture during the years that weapon development, acquisition, and training will take. Even with relatively low-yield weapons, collateral effects would be significant unless the targets were located in isolated areas. 3 These are reasons to question whether the new weapons concepts, if implemented, would have more than marginal utility and whether they would prove more “acceptable” than the weapons in the current stockpile.

New weapons, new missions

In a March 2004 Joint Report to Congress, the secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy in arguing for research on low-yield nuclear weapons asked: “In light of the widely held view that the United States goes to great lengths to limit collateral damage, would a rogue state leader contemplating the use of WMD consider credible a response employing warheads with yields in the range of tens to hundreds of kilotons that could cause considerable collateral blast damage and radioactive contamination to civilian populations?”

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The B61-11 is the only earth-penetrating weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. These test bombs (excavated after being dropped from a B-2) penetrated permafrost to depths of 6 and 10 feet.

Similarly, Keith Payne, who as deputy assistant defense secretary was involved in the production of the 2001 NPR, maintains that there are two reasons to study new low-yield weapons and the feasibility of threatening hardened and deeply buried facilities: to deter WMD attacks on the United States or its allies, and to dissuade “rogues” from investing in WMD. “Precision, low-yield weapons that would inflict a much lower level of civilian casualties will appear much more credible to some opponents, and thus constitute a better deterrent to war,” Payne wrote. “Do we want rogue leaders to believe that they can create a sanctuary for themselves and their WMD just by digging?” 4

These statements, along with the National Security Strategy and the NPR, imply that in the post-Cold War world, hostile regional powers in the possession of a few WMD may not be deterred from launching attacks unless the United States procures new nuclear weapons capabilities.

If this is true, it is no distant threat. Today, a number of potentially hostile states already have chemical and biological weapons and at least one (North Korea) likely has nuclear weapons. The Bush administration appears to be arguing that until the United States develops new weapons concepts, which will be at least some five to 10 years in the future, the United States may not be able to deter a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. 5 This would be frightening if it were true, but we believe this assertion to be incorrect.

Deterrence and dissuasion

Would an identifiable regional power initiate an unprovoked WMD attack on the U.S. homeland based on the conclusion that the United States did not have the “appropriate” nuclear weapons? It seems very unlikely. The credibility of an overwhelming U.S. response (nuclear or conventional) that would severely punish the state would be extremely high. It would seem that nothing could be gained by such an attack and much could be lost.

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The “spider hole” where Saddam Hussein was captured (above) was neither hardened nor deeply buried.

Any lack of U.S. capability to attack hard and deeply buried targets or other weapons storage facilities would probably play no role in the aggressor's decision, because the aggressor would be aware that the United States has many other retaliatory options.

The president and many others have expressed concern that some rogue state might give or sell WMD to a terrorist organization that could then use the weapons against the U.S. homeland (presumably by smuggling the weapons into the country, since terrorist organizations do not have intercontinental missiles). The United States has stated that it would hold the cooperating state responsible if such an attack occurred. Since no potentially cooperating state could be sure that the United States would not learn its identity, much the same deterrence applies. Even if a state cooperating with terrorists might rationally count on some degree of deniability, the new weapons under consideration would not diminish that expectation or in any way enhance deterrence against cooperation with terrorists.

Under extended deterrence, the United States gives the cover of its protective “nuclear umbrella” to its allies to persuade them not to procure their own nuclear weapons. In many ways, the extended deterrence requirements are the same as for central deterrence, and the contribution of the new weapons under consideration would seem to be marginal.

In most cases, if a regional power attacked a U.S. ally, the United States could respond with an overwhelming conventional attack that could severely damage the attacker's forces and infrastructure, perhaps causing its government to collapse, even without resorting to nuclear weapons. This in itself is likely to be a sufficient deterrent.

If a regional power that threatened a U.S. ally was capable of striking the United States with nuclear weapons (or other WMD), the issue would become more complicated, and extended deterrence might be weakened. If the United States intervened, the regional power's decision to escalate to an attack on the United States would probably depend on its perception of U.S. objectives. If a hostile regime is convinced that the United States will overthrow it no matter what, any kind of deterrence is likely to be less effective, if effective at all. In that case, a hostile regime might resort to drastic means (such as a nuclear warning shot at the United States) to try to forestall its destruction.

In short, the credibility and efficacy of extended deterrence, as of central deterrence, is not likely to depend on the development of new nuclear weapons concepts, but on such matters as U.S. conventional capabilities, the long-range weapon capabilities of the adversary, U.S. defenses, and U.S. war aims.

The United States could in principle use nuclear threats against nuclear-armed regional powers in order to deter conventional aggression against its allies. This is in many ways just a subset of the extended deterrence problem. But an additional complication is that if the United States has an announced policy of nuclear first-use to defeat a conventional attack by a nuclear state, it might provoke the opponent to use nuclear weapons (or biological or chemical weapons) from the beginning. This could put the United States at a larger disadvantage than if it tried to deter a conventional attack with conventional weapons. A publicly announced U.S. policy, which would be necessary if it were to act as a deterrent, of threatening to initiate a nuclear war against a country would raise many political issues. Furthermore, the U.S. ally being defended might think it is not in its best interest to become a nuclear battlefield (as did America's European NATO allies during the Cold War) and reject this nuclear warfighting strategy.

The NPR seems to imply that the presumed effectiveness of the new weapon systems against WMD sites will dissuade potential opponents from deploying WMD. This presumes opponents will not take steps to obviate that effectiveness, such as burying fixed sites deeper or placing munitions on mobile or hidden launchers. Beyond this, the NPR argument rests not on deterrence through the threat of retaliation, for which these specialized weapons are not necessary, but on the threat to destroy the WMD facilities before they are used–that is, in first strike.

A more candid but politically risky argument for dissuasion is this: If the United States procures new weapons, it will have the capability to launch a preventive nuclear attack to destroy the rogue's WMD (with supposedly limited collateral damage), so possessing WMD will be of no value or could even be counterproductive, since it could increase the possibility of U.S. nuclear attack.

Both arguments assume a historically disproved premise–that an opponent will not build otherwise effective weapons because the United States has a weapon that can destroy certain storage or deployment sites.

In the current international environment, the dissuasion argument for new nuclear weapons overlooks the deterrence role of WMD from a regional power's point of view–particularly of one the United States is hostile toward. The Bush doctrine of preventive war, even without a nuclear threat, provides a strong incentive for such powers to try to obtain WMD to defend themselves by providing a potential deterrent to a U.S. attack, since a conventional deterrent is unlikely to be sufficient against massive U.S. conventional power. 6 If the nuclear posture contemplates using nuclear weapons against such states, they may be further encouraged to build such weapons and to protect them from a U.S. preventive attack. Thus, if the United States maintains a policy of preventive war and were actually to proceed with its plans to deploy new “usable” nuclear weapons, the result may be more proliferation.

Preventive war

Today, many analysts and policy makers argue that the primary U.S. security interest is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to hostile states and states that might cooperate with terrorists. 7 Since nuclear weapons (and, to a lesser degree, biological weapons) would pose a devastating threat to the United States, the concern is well justified. In the past, there have been many international efforts to prevent proliferation, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions.

Some observers believe that these methods have failed and that the United States must in the future take proactive counterproliferation (preemptive) military measures to disarm hostile countries–the approach implied in the Bush doctrine. Moreover, the administration has reiterated the long-standing U.S. policy of refusing to foreswear the first-use of nuclear weapons.

Effectively implementing the new doctrine could be difficult, with or without the use of nuclear weapons. A strategy of launching only a “disarming counterforce first strike” to destroy the adversary's WMD is likely to be insufficient. In some cases, targets such as nuclear reactors used to produce nuclear weapons materials may be obvious and easy to destroy with conventional weapons. But most targets are likely to be difficult to locate and destroy–intelligence on weapons program facilities may be incomplete. The problem would be even worse if weapons had already been produced, since they could be protected by dispersal, deception, hardening, or placing them in urban areas where they would be politically difficult to attack.

A successful U.S. attack may not even be effective–it might only delay the offending program, while driving it into harder to locate, less targetable channels. Moreover, the destruction caused by a preemptive U.S. strike would probably increase hostility toward the United States, causing the adversary to redouble its efforts.

Thus, it seems likely that the only way to assure that the proactive counterproliferation doctrine would work would be to invade and overthrow the regime.

Consider the case of North Korea. After their 2003 summit, Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stated bluntly that they “would not tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. If negotiations fail, the implication of the Bush doctrine is that the United States might try to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons by a military strike. Intermediate steps such as a blockade of North Korea appear more likely at the time of this writing, but these are acts of war, and North Korea has stated it would construe them as such. As a result, if negotiations break down, escalation is a clear possibility.

North Korea already has a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and is thought to have at least a few nuclear weapons. Locating North Korea's weapons could be very difficult, if not impossible. At most, the United States might be able to strike at the identified nuclear production reactor and reprocessing plant in Yongbyon and a number of suspect military sites. In retaliation, North Korea has announced that it would unleash a massive attack (which could be conventional, chemical, biological, and/or nuclear) on South Korea and the U.S. troops stationed there.

North Korea has thousands of artillery pieces and hundreds of missiles that are within striking range of the more than 10 million people in Seoul. To deter a U.S. preventive war, the North could threaten (and execute if necessary) a retaliatory attack against Seoul. Unless North Korea's firepower could be suppressed, the immediate consequences could be devastating–hundreds of thousands in Seoul could be killed in a very short time.

To have a chance, the United States would probably want to procure hundreds of new missiles with small nuclear weapons, maintain them on high alert, and maintain constant surveillance of the area. Even then protecting Seoul would be difficult, since during the initial U.S. attack most of North Korea's artillery might be in hardened shelters. Even if only 10 or 20 percent of the artillery and short-range missiles survived, Pyongyang could still probably devastate Seoul. Since longer-range missiles in the rear might also survive, a nuclear or chemical attack would not even have to rely on close-in artillery or missiles.

If North Korea does have some number of missile-deliverable nuclear weapons, it would also have the option of using a few of these to destroy U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan, or at least could threaten to do so. These are military targets that could legitimately be attacked following a U.S. first strike. Disabling them would cripple U.S. capabilities and further split the United States from its allies. A U.S. preventive war posture, coupled with the overt nuclear threat to North Korea posed by the U.S. nuclear posture, would enhance both the plausibility and the likelihood of such a North Korea response.

Thus, even if the United States procured many new nuclear weapons and missiles, a U.S.-initiated war could still result in thousands of American and millions of Korean casualties, massive destruction on the Korean Peninsula, and countless other serious repercussions–though the United States might eventually prevail.

North Korea might be considered an extreme case. In situations involving other countries, the consequences of preventive war aimed at disarmament might not be so adverse or immediate. On the other hand, countries such as Iran and Pakistan are much larger, more populous, and could be more difficult to disarm before devastating retaliatory action is taken. It is not clear that new U.S. nuclear weapons would be at all helpful in preventing this retaliation, if the country's weapons were dispersed before the war.

Nonproliferation and the new doctrine

In general, the principal means used to stop the spread of nuclear weapons has been a combination of the multilateral nonproliferation regime and the threat or use of force. The United States has been in the forefront of that effort for decades.

When states do not adhere to the nonproliferation regime, the United States and other concerned countries have a choice of relative inaction (as has been the case with Israel and South Africa), or various degrees of coercive diplomacy, combining military, economic, and political incentives and threats (as were brought into play successfully in the cases of Taiwan and South Korea and unsuccessfully in the cases of India and Pakistan).

Coercive diplomacy can in the extreme become a policy of counterproliferation. Such acts, if undertaken without international sanction, would not be considered by most of the world as part of the normal and acceptable approaches to nonproliferation, and may be considered acts of aggression.

The NPR broadens possible nuclear missions, increases support to the nuclear infrastructure, and shortens the interval before any resumption of nuclear testing. Because many see this as inconsistent with NPT requirements, the new U.S. posture may weaken the nonproliferation regime. Indeed, the U.S. nuclear posture has been called inconsistent with U.S. undertakings made at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, which included “concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems,” and “a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination.”

Reaction of other states

The 2001 NPR mentions specific countries of concern in connection with the nuclear posture: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and China (primarily arising out of a conflict over Taiwan). In addition, the National Security Strategy implicitly warns Russia (or any other state) not to challenge U.S. hegemony.

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Hello, neighbor: North Korean soldiers on guard in Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone, about 30 miles north of Seoul, South Korea.

Russia is modernizing its nuclear force, has retained a large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons, and may be adding more. Its nuclear white paper spells out a policy not unlike the new American policy. How much of this can be ascribed to the new U.S. positions cannot be ascertained, but the new nuclear posture gives Moscow an incentive to move toward reintegration of nuclear weapons into general fighting forces and to consider wider use of these weapons.

China may be less concerned about new U.S. nuclear weapons than about U.S. ballistic missile defense systems–national missile defense and also theater defenses, if they are given to Taiwan. National missile defense was strongly emphasized in the NPR, particularly as a shield to allow U.S. intervention abroad, and it is one of the legs of the New Triad. The NPR gives China an incentive to expand its small ICBM force and perhaps to develop and deploy multiple independently targetable vehicles (MIRVs), SLBMs, and cruise missiles to defeat any future U.S. missile defense, so that it may sustain its deterrent capability. From all evidence to date, Chinese leadership has higher priorities and would rather not have to pay for these programs, but the combination of a new U.S. policy with respect to nuclear weapons and the renewed U.S. commitment to Taiwan's defense may force its hand. China would probably await actual U.S. developments before sizing its own nuclear weapons programs.

The situations with Iraq and Libya have been “resolved,” at least temporarily. North Korea may have speeded up, and certainly has not abandoned, its nuclear program. Iran has made enough concessions to avoid being referred to the U.N. Security Council but maintains its right to acquire facilities that could make nuclear weapons material. Syria may not be an immediate problem with respect to nuclear weapons.

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Conventional weapons can get the job done, as shown in this successful NATO air strike on an underground Serb ammunition depot in 1995.

Other states of concern not mentioned in the NPR are Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia stated on at least two occasions in 2003 that it was reconsidering its adherence to the NPT. Given Saudi resources and the ambiguous record of the Saudi government and elite toward extremist groups, this should be cause for concern.

Pakistan has long been of concern, for obvious reasons: its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon infrastructure; its lead participation in the nuclear weapons black market; the presence of organized extremist groups including Al Qaeda; and a fragile, if cooperative, dictatorial government. Pakistan may have cooperated with the United States on important counterterrorism objectives in the course of the past few years, but it has not become more transparent in its nuclear weapons operations, nor has it made any move to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime broadly, other than minimal action to curtail A. Q. Khan's black market. The change in U.S. declaratory nuclear policy does not seem to have had an impact on Pakistan.

All the above countries, except perhaps Saudi Arabia, are believed to have some WMD capabilities, and most of them have hardened and deeply buried targets.

A U.S. nuclear attack

What would happen if the United States built new nuclear weapons–and used them? A U.S. nuclear attack would cause severe physical, social, economic, and political damage. It is unlikely that in a conflict the United States would use fewer than five to ten 10-kiloton weapons. (Fewer would probably not achieve much of a tactical advantage, given the number of targets and possible bioweapon storage sites maintained by potential adversaries such as North Korea or Iran.)

Five to ten nuclear explosions of 10 kilotons each a few meters below ground would destroy most buildings within 1-2 kilometers of each explosion; force prompt evacuation to save lives within about a hundred square kilometers of each explosion; contaminate buildings, grounds, livestock, and crops over thousands of square kilometers; and depending on wind and rain, cause fallout sufficient to cause evacuation and/or sheltering as far as thousands of kilometers downwind. Measurable radioactivity would be detected around the world. These effects, while destructive and dramatic, are probably comparable in terms of deaths and direct costs to a few months of all-out conventional war (though not in terms of psychological and political ramifications, which would be much more severe).

The effect on non-nuclear countries of a U.S. combat use of nuclear weapons on some other state is unpredictable and would vary. Some countries may react by being cowed, cooperative, and submissive for a time at least, while others may determine that they should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.

Given that the U.S. homeland, and to a lesser extent U.S. projection capabilities, can only effectively be threatened by other states through the use of nuclear weapons, the United States would likely find the world a much more dangerous place after any use of nuclear weapons.

Actual use of nuclear weapons in combat in theaters where the United States is attempting to intervene is likely to produce dire consequences in the region where they are used, particularly if the other side retaliates with nuclear weapons. Ports, air bases, and aircraft carriers in or near the area targeted could be gone, and the country to be occupied by the United States is likely to be contaminated–as may be neighboring countries. Beyond the area subjected to a nuclear attack, the reaction to U.S. nuclear use will almost surely be to strengthen the hand of those, in Russia, China, India, and elsewhere, who argue that a modern, integrated, tested nuclear force is necessary for their security. Both in the United States and abroad, U.S. nuclear use could be attended by considerable revulsion and controversy, and a deeper political split than has occurred to date.

The community of democratic states committed to increased effectiveness of international law and diplomacy, a community that includes the most effective and powerful U.S. allies, would surely split from the United States on any unwarranted use of nuclear weapons, whether first use or not.

Reduce nuclear threats

Nuclear weapons are perceived, in part correctly, as weapons that can demonstrably win wars, as with the United States against Japan, and deter attack, as during the Cold War. They are also commonly and correctly perceived as exceedingly dangerous, so that acquiring them is viewed in most cultures and countries as a pact with the devil. It is generally hoped that some better source of security will eventually replace them.

What steps toward that better source of security can be taken now? We suggest three. The first is to enhance and make more precise the security assurances, negative and positive, that have been given by nuclear weapon states to other states in connection with the nonproliferation regime. The second is to reduce nuclear dangers, mainly by increasing the length of time between the receipt of warning and actual firing of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. The third is to lay a more secure groundwork for nuclear disarmament through more encompassing, durable, and verifiable arms reduction agreements. Such proposals have been elaborated in many places.

Rather than providing a solution to a problem, a strategy that makes the use of nuclear weapons more acceptable would seem to run counter to U.S. strategic interests. Nuclear weapons are increasingly easy to acquire and have a significant capability to neutralize conventional advantages. An administration committed to having a free hand in intervening abroad militarily should want to do everything it can to remove nuclear weapons from any possible conflict and to line up as much help as possible in making their acquisition harder. Yet, the overt new threat of using nuclear weapons for military objectives, coupled with the Bush administration's devaluing of international instruments, are likely to have just the opposite effect: Incentives to acquire nuclear weapons to deter U.S. military actions will increase while U.S. capabilities to monitor and get cooperation in preventing nuclear proliferation will decrease.

The dominant incentive in decisions having to do with nuclear weapons acquisition, deployment, and transfer will continue to be security, with domestic politics an important factor, as has been the case to date. What will be different is that those decisions will be made in the realization that the United States no longer supports or rewards adherence to the prior nuclear norms of behavior, but rather reemphasizes the military utility of nuclear weapons as tools of warfare.

While a case can certainly be made that the international nonproliferation regime needs strengthening to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and other WMD, a National Security Strategy that contemplates preventive war, coupled with a policy that better integrates nuclear weapons into the armed forces, runs counter to this goal.