Issues: Nuclear Weapons

Although national security is widely perceived to depend on military strength, more weapons do not provide enduring security. Military expansion provokes fear and potential retaliation. Threats tend to increase the hostility and distrust that lead to war....We urge multilateral disarmament, supported by the conversion of military industries to the production of civilian goods and services, and the retraining of personnel toward that end. We also advocate that the United States take unilateral steps toward its own disarmament, believing that other nations will respond affirmatively to this example. The risks of disarmament are far smaller than the risks involved in the current course of weapons stockpiling and development.

 - FCNL Statement of Legislative Policy, 2003.

• Introduction
• The Cold War is Over- The Nuclear Threat is Not
• The Bush Administration's Policies
• Alternative Policies for a More Secure World
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources
• Table 1 The Countdown to Nuclear War
• Table 2 Nuclear Weapon Status of Select States
• Map of Nuclear Weapon States

Nuclear weapons, combined with the dangerous policies of the Bush Administration, pose a very real danger to humanity and creation. Alternative U.S. nuclear policies are required if there is to be any hope of building a world "free or war and the threat of war."

In the absence of a profound shift in global politics, the threat of nuclear weapons will remain for at least a decade. While there is not much hope for abolishing nuclear weapons in the short-term, there are many policy options available that could reduce the threat posed by existing nuclear arsenals and reduce the incentives for proliferation. Below are policy proposals that would address the lingering dangers posed by nuclear weapons outlined in this report.

Unilateral Steps: Practicing Self-Restraint

Reaffirm Commitment to Disarmament
The nuclear threat will recede only if the U.S. demonstrates by its own actions and policies that it is firmly committed to nuclear disarmament and moves toward a non-nuclear world. To facilitate progress toward nuclear disarmament, the U.S. should substantially increase its diplomatic and technical efforts. Diplomatically, this would mean enthusiastically engaging in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and other appropriate forums. Technically, the U.S. could increase investment in research on technologies used for verification of compliance with arms control agreements.

Take Weapons Off "Hair-Trigger" Status
It is no longer possible for the United States and Russia to justify keeping their strategic missiles targeted at major U.S. and Russian cities on hair-trigger alert. The risks involved with maintaining this posture are unacceptably high. Taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger, or "de-alerting," would significantly reduce the chance of a nuclear disaster. De-alerting nuclear weapons would involve increasing the time needed to prepare missiles for launch from minutes to days, weeks, or longer. Increasing the time needed to launch a nuclear missile would make human and computer error less likely and catastrophe more avoidable.

Retire All Tactical Nuclear Weapons
Also known as "battlefield" or "non-strategic" nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons exist in numbers comparable to those of the large strategic nuclear forces in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. These weapons come in the form of bombs, mines, and artillery shells. Due to their small and portable nature, tactical nuclear weapons are vulnerable to theft. However, tactical nuclear weapons have never been the subject of a formal international treaty, and are regularly-and dangerously-overlooked in discussions of the nuclear threat.

The U.S. developed tactical nuclear weapons to defend Europe from a conventional Soviet attack at a time when NATO's ground forces would likely have been overwhelmed by the larger Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies.²⁷ Recognizing that there is no longer justification for these weapons, President George H.W. Bush took nearly all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons off deployment and began dismantling them. The current Bush Administration and Congress should continue this initiative and dismantle all remaining tactical nuclear weapons.

As was discussed earlier, the Bush Administration is actively seeking new tactical nuclear weapons that are explicitly designated for use on the battlefield. These tactical weapons-the RNEP and the mini-nuke-should be immediately abandoned. The U.S. should be retiring all its tactical nuclear weapons, not developing new ones.

Legally Binding Security Assurances
Negative security assurances are pledges by the nuclear states not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. Despite its negative security assurances pledges, senior officials in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation to attacks with chemical or biological weapons. Congress needs to make negative security assurances legally binding in U.S. law. By legalizing negative security assurances, the U.S. would send a message to the world that obtaining nuclear weapons will decrease, rather than enhance security. Failure to make such a policy legally binding leaves open the use of nuclear weapons in a broad range of situations, thus breaking the firewall between nuclear and conventional weapons.

Continue Testing Moratorium and Ratify CTBT
A global halt to nuclear weapons test explosions has been a key security objective for the U.S. since negotiations between President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were initiated in 1958. Congress finally legislated a halt to nuclear testing in 1992. This moratorium allowed the international community to negotiate an international agreement to prohibit all nuclear weapons test explosions. In September 1996, President Clinton joined other world leaders in signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The test moratorium and U.S. commitment to join the CTBT provided incentive in 1995 for the non-nuclear states to indefinitely extend the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The U.S. Senate voted down the CTBT, by a vote of 51 to 48 in October 1999. Senate rules allow this treaty to be brought up again. Ratification of the CTBT must be an absolute U.S. policy priority. In the meantime, the U.S. must continue observing the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.

Abandon Missile Shield
In 2002, the Bush Administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). With the treaty's abrogation, the Administration has accelerated construction of a missile shield system.

There is a legitimate fear that a deployed missile shield system may cause a new arms race. While the Administration claims that missile shields are solely defensive in nature, other nations may see these systems, combined with U.S. strategic offensive weapons, as a first strike offensive threat. In a worst case scenario, missile shield deployment may cause Russia to modernize its forces rather than disarm. China may deploy dozens more intercontinental ballistic missiles with more nuclear warheads on each missile to overwhelm U.S. missile defense systems. India would likely respond to China's build-up, and Pakistan would surely follow suit. An accelerated Chinese nuclear weapons program could move Japan to re-militarize or even go nuclear, pushing South Korea to do the same.

Missile shields are risky and, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into these systems, have not been proven to work. International cooperation for arms control and disarmament will do far more to advance lasting peace and security, and at much lower cost than missile shields.

Cooperative Steps

Increase Support for Cooperative Threat Reduction
As the Soviet Union began to break apart in 1991, some members of Congress became aware of the dangers posed by the dissolution of this nuclear superpower. Thousands of tons of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons material were spread across 11 time zones. Russian leaders, doubting their ability to account for and control their arsenal, requested U.S. cooperation in securing and protecting Russia's arsenal and weapons-usable materials. Led by Senators Sam Nunn (GA) and Richard Lugar (IN), Congress laid the framework for handling the threats posed by insecure stockpiles of former Soviet unconventional weapons. Since 1991, this cooperative initiative has evolved to a broad set of programs across different agencies, primarily the Defense, Energy, and State Departments. Together, these programs have helped to protect, secure, and begin destroying nuclear warheads, delivery vehicles (such as bombers, missiles, and submarines), and hundreds of metric tons of weapons-usable material. Additional programs have helped redirect weapons scientists and engineers from defense work to civilian employment.

International Diplomacy
The U.S. needs to continue negotiations with Russia to reduce the two nuclear stockpiles. The SORT Treaty, signed in 2002, should not be seen as a final bilateral disarmament treaty. Many opportunities remain for the U.S. and Russia to work together to reduce the nuclear threat. Because SORT fails to lock in strategic nuclear reductions and neglects a vast array of other Cold War-era threats, including tactical nuclear weapons, the two states should take concrete intiatives to negotiate deeper, irreversible, and verifiable arsenal cuts.

In addition to negotiations with Russia, the U.S. could help curb proliferation through bilateral diplomacy with other nations. There have been instances in the past when the U.S. intervened to remove nuclear weapons or halt a nuclear weapons program. Under significant pressure and incentives from the U.S. and the international community, South Korea (1975), Taiwan (1988), North Korea (1994³⁰), and Libya (2003³¹) abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. The U.S. also intervened in the Ukraine after it inherited nuclear weapons from the USSR. After the disintegration of the USSR, Ukraine found itself in possession of the world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Ukraine initially announced its intention to obtain operational control over the strategic nuclear weapons deployed in its territory. Yet after pressure and aid from the U.S. (and Russia), Ukraine removed all of its nuclear warheads in 1996.

Abandon Policy of Preventive War
The recent Iraq war was the first application of the Bush Administration's preventive war doctrine. The Administration argues that preventive war can be an effective instrument to prevent the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Engaging in wars to curb proliferation is an ineffective nonproliferation policy. Preventive wars are likely to encourage, rather than dissuade, would-be proliferators. As seen with North Korea, the development of nuclear weapons is viewed as the only sure route to deter U.S. aggression. Thus, the result of preventive war is an increase in illicit weapons, not a decrease. War is the wrong way to prevent proliferation.

The U.S. should discard the policy of preventive war and instead adopt a new national security strategy based on collective security, international law, and the prevention of war. The concept of human security,³² not national security, should be the overarching norm. The international nonproliferation regime provides the U.S. with important tools to curb proliferation without resorting to war. The U.S. government should fully support this regime and its implementing organizations both politically and financially as the first line of defense against proliferation.

(Webmaster's Note: Click here for related graphic, "Table II, Nuclear Weapon Status of Select States.")

Fissile Material Control
Effectively managing, controlling, and disposing of fissile material are essential to preserving international security and reducing the risks of nuclear war, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism. A global, verifiable ban on the production of fissile materials for nuclear explosives is an essential part of any comprehensive nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime.

A Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. A cutoff treaty on fissile material would effectively put a limit on the size of nuclear arsenals. It would also make weapons reductions irreversible if the fissile material were disposed.³³

Strengthen Biological, Chemical Weapons Treaties
Because of the difficulty in obtaining nuclear weapons, some states have opted for the "poor man's alternative," establishing chemical and biological weapons programs. Although they are less deadly than nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons still have the ability to cause massive casualties. Some nuclear weapons advocates, including senior members of the current Bush Administration, view the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons as justification for the U.S. to maintain its nuclear arsenal.

Global efforts to control biological and chemical weapons center on the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Control of chemical and biological weapons must be strengthened to remove the impetus for nuclear weapons.

Support the Use of Preventive Diplomacy
The U.S. should vigorously support the use of preventive diplomacy, including the use of mediation, arbitration, threat reduction, and confidence-building measures to de-escalate tensions and resolve conflicts. Specifically, the U.S. should consider the motivating factors driving proliferation and then look to eliminate these motives.

Alleviating proliferation motives would entail active involvement to resolve regional disputes throughout the world, especially the Indian-Pakistani conflict. To stem proliferation of nuclear weapons, the U.S. must address the chronic disputes that create the greatest incentives for acquiring such weapons. Such engagement would include significant amounts of time and money, but it is a small price compared to the potential loss of human life that would result from a nuclear war and the ongoing cost of maintaining our nuclear arsenal and building missile shields.

Address Roots of Insecurity and Instability
The U.S. should work collectively to address the root causes of insecurity and instability, including economic inequality, the chronic lack of good governance and human rights, and the increasing divide between cultures and civilizations.

The huge economic gap that separates the global haves from the have-nots is, arguably, the most significant destabilizing force in the world today. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are enveloped in grinding poverty with little or no hope that their lives or the lives of their children might improve, short of drastic action.

In addition to extreme economic inequality, much of the world is plagued with chronic lack of good governance and human rights. The violation of basic human rights and the lack of good governance is at the root of much instability in the world. Extending the rule of law to all corners of the globe will reduce the reliance on the rule of force.

Effective remedy of root causes will also require a bridging of perceived differences between cultures and people. To move beyond a world at the brink of nuclear war, humanity must begin to appreciate that what unites is far greater than what divides. Additionally, what separates societies, in terms of our beliefs, customs, and traditions, should not be destabilizing; it should be cherished.

Nuclear weapons will do nothing to address the systemic violence that is at the root of global instability and insecurity. It will only aggravate these problems. It is wrong for the wealthiest nation in the world to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to weapons instead of committing that money to economic development to relieve global poverty, supporting human rights and democracy promotion, or bridging the cultural divide. If there is any hope of building a more peaceful world, the U.S. must shift its priorities away from instruments of death and mass destruction toward policies and practices that improve quality of life and better secure the earth.

²⁷ Brian Alexander and Alistair Millar, ed. Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Emerging Threats in an Evolving Security Environment. Brassey's Inc., 2003, 14.

²⁸ Defense Threat Reduction Agency Scorecard. Available online at http://www.dtra.mil/ctr/ctr_score.html. Updated September 10, 2003.

²⁹ Kenneth Luongo and William Hoehn III. "Reform and Expansion of Cooperative Threat Reduction." Arms Control Today, 33. No. 5, June 2003.

³⁰ The 1994 "Agreed Framework" between the United States and North Korea fell apart in 2002. North Korea claims that it has restarted its nuclear weapons program. The Central Intelligence Agency believes that North Korea should be considered a country with viable nuclear weapons.

³¹ Although this deal is still in its infancy, Libya has agreed to dismantle its weapons programs and open itself up to inspections.

³² Often referred to as "people-centered security" or "security with a human face," human security places human beings--rather than states--at the focal point of security considerations. Human security emphasizes the complex relationships and often-ignored linkages between disarmament, human rights, and development.

³³ Steve Fetter and Frank von Hippel. "A Step-by-step Approach to Global Fissile Material Cut-Off." Arms Control Today. Vol. 25, No. 8, November/December 1995.

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