March/April 1997
Vol. 53, No. 2

The bomb has many friends

By William M. Arkin

Too many people want to keep the bom alive. Too bad Butler didn't tell us who they are

Gen. Lee Butler (ret.), the former commander-in-chief of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, says that nuclear weapons no longer serve any useful purpose and they should be scrapped. His candid testimony is on target-and all the more powerful because of his unique experience.

Nevertheless, Butler's core idea, that a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is by necessity a world devoid of nuclear weapons, is not likely to find universal support among groups as superficially diverse as arms controllers, government policy-makers, think-tank pundits, and editorial writers. No matter how you slice it, they all seem trapped in the same line of reasoning, an old circular conundrum that has been described like this:

What are the targets of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons.

What provocations could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons.

What is the defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons.

How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Why can't nuclear weapons be abolished? Nuclear weapons.

The reason Butler says he is compelled to speak out now is that, despite the end of the Cold War, nuke supporters cling stubbornly to this circular formation. Although nearly everyone admits that the threat of global nuclear war has virtually disappeared, the spectre of nuclear proliferation and terrorism and an evil world keep people spooked. It is a crisis climate not supported by the facts:

The number of weapons that are operational is less than half of the number just ten years ago.

Only a handful of warheads are being produced worldwide. (Contrast that with a 5,000-plus annual production rate merely a decade ago.)

Hardly any serious research on new systems is under way.

U.S. standing military forces- ground, naval, and tactical air-have been largely denuclearized.

Fewer than a dozen nuclear storage sites remain outside the homelands of the nuclear powers. (They are all American.)

The roster of nations that have formally renounced nuclear capability (or have been pushed out of the nuclear business) continues to grow.

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been enormous advances in the web of treaties, controls, exchanges, and safeguards that discourage renewal and proliferation.

The possibility of nuclear terrorism remains more fancy than fact. It is, however, the favorite new bogeyman of the threat mongers. Even the Bulletin said a year ago in an editorial that "the possibility that terrorist groups might obtain nuclear weapons is a real danger."

A real danger? Meaning that it is more likely today than in the 1970s, when terrorism was far more prevalent and nuclear weapons were stored at over a thousand depots worldwide, not counting nuclear-armed ships that routinely visited foreign ports? Nuclear weapons are now located at less than one-tenth as many places, and the trend continues downward.

Butler's sweeping dismissal of the function of nuclear weapons is perhaps his greatest contribution. He does not fall into the trap of expounding on the world's evils, then declaring that nuclear weapons must go because the globe is such a dangerous place. (Nuclear weapons are often condemned on the latter grounds. In fact, such arguments suggest powerfully that they are useful and ought to be kept around.)

Unequal contest

Even when under attack, the nuclear weapons enterprise is remarkably resilient. Fundamentally, nuclear weapons equal danger, which equals prominence, which equals funding, support, and prominence, which equals danger.

Whether for military advocates and weapons designers who rely on government money or anti-nuclear pressure groups and arms control organizations dependent on foundation funds, this equation is unchanging.

Of course danger always suggests terrible consequences, such as a Saddam Hussein getting a nuclear weapon or loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorists. Solutions, whether arms reduction treaties, cooperative threat reduction programs, counterproliferation strategies, or the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program, promise relief-but never instant relief, mind you, or permanent relief.

Nuclear professionals thus engage in a perilous balancing act. The problems associated with nuclear weapons are, of course, grave enough for the public to surrender control to the custodians. Yet the impression can never be conveyed that things are completely out of control. That would catch the public's full attention, cause general alarm, and perhaps disrupt the gloom-and-more-gloom cycle by forcing real change.

Arms controllers and anti-nuclear advocates inadvertently sustain this same cycle. Though they spar with government custodians and unrepentant boosters, they are so wedded to the habit of declaring things forever on the brink that they come off as like-minded supporters of the relevance and utility of nuclear weapons.

This odd devil's alliance between opposing camps bolsters the steady impression that a lot needs to be done. And yet, it is an unequal contest. The public-and the anti-nuclear community-has every right and duty to reveal the government's sluggishness or deceit, to complain that this or that facility isn't clean enough, or this or that warhead isn't safe enough, or this or that weapon is too expensive, or this or that plan isn't well thought out or executed efficiently enough.

But invariably after the complaint is lodged there is the requisite back and forth and congressional hearings and blue-ribbon panels, and the bomb boosters win. Write another check and we will fix whatever needs fixing, say the custodians-stockpile stewardship miraculously costs more than the nuclear budget in the days of production and testing-and so the cycle continues.

Butler is not the first nuclear figure to speak out against his former employer. He offers all of the logical and necessary steps needed to reduce the dangers associated with nuclear weapons. Yet there is something missing in terms of jolting us off of the treadmill.

Cry wolf

For 40 years, nuclear midnight meant just that: the end of it all. Today that definition is fuzzy, for there is life after midnight. Because the public no longer frets much about nuclear war and "the arms race," there is enormous and simultaneous competition from pro- and anti-nuclear forces, both to prolong the public slumber and to capture the public's attention.

Through it all, the two communities-myself included-thrive on bad news. On one side are the anonymous colonels, bureaucrats, and scientists at nuclear agencies, laboratories and "strategic" commands that populate study groups and committees. On the other side are arms controllers, diplomats, peaceniks, lobbyists, and busybodies who also populate study groups and committees.

These otherwise disparate actors have never had more common ground than today. They may battle for the public's heart and mind, and disagree about policy alternatives and the velocity of change, but they remain equally addicted to a climate of disaster, particularly the spectre of a nuclear crisis triggered by rampant proliferation.

The never-ending impulse to cry wolf-whether in the name of disarmament, stewardship, or renewal- creates the self-fulfilling reality of crisis and danger. Inflated value is conferred upon nuclear materials and weapons, thereby creating artificial demand and undermining work towards reducing the "danger." The constant ticking of the clock contributes to a sense of doom, one that naturally conveys the message that the problems are so massive as to be unsolvable.

Butler describes the mind-numbing nuclear business and the unfortunate prolongation of Cold War policies, yet he intentionally avoids condemning anyone, an unfortunate oversight. As principal overseer of the nuclear establishment for many years, he says he fought against the Cold War nuclear mindset, and even ended some careers prematurely. But who are the faceless and too-powerful covert decision-makers who have outlived the general and continue to nurture and safeguard their blessed weapon? Isn't it time to ask who agitates against nuclear disarmament?

The way things really work is that lab scientists, defense program bureaucrats, science advisers to the commanders of the unified commands, and nuclear specialists on military staffs manufacture "needs" and develop nuclear "requirements." One may hail their Cold War devotion and commitment on behalf of the bomb, but the unfortunate legacy is an enduring process by which nuclear requirements persist due to inertia. It is bottom-up rather than top-down policy.

In choosing not to criticize the nuclear establishment, Butler allows these pro-nuclear forces to hide behind service, hardly ever facing up to their spellbound dedication to the bomb, never having to acknowledge their corrosive role in ultimately undermining the universal task-which is bringing the bomb under control.

Organically withering

The assumption was once that weapons modernization was an automatic process. The labs would by necessity get the money to build new warheads to replace outmoded ones; the next model of missile or bomber would certainly be developed to supplant the obsolete.

But now that the political situation has changed, no one officially wants any complications or problems associated with anything that smacks of nuclear weapons being "new" or "modernized" or "improved." Absent a frank statement of the permanence of nuclear weapons that is fundamental to current U.S. policy, the real intentions remain opaque. Decisions are masked by stewardship and talk of "hedges" and "contingencies." Nuclear disarmament is thwarted by "supreme national interest" escape clauses that, in the end, connote continued utility for nuclear weapons. And the bomb wins.

It is no wonder that the fight over the nuclear future is again becoming ferocious. The believers pounce on the weaknesses of the White House and attempt to turn the nuclear debate into a partisan battle. Unlike the Democrats, they say with scorn, Republicans are not about to leave the nation vulnerable by engaging in nuclear disarmament.

What is most striking about the four-score list of retired generals and admirals who joined Butler and retired Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster in calling for a renewed commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons is not the weight of the names but the absence of the two most prominent military officers in American society: Gens. Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. The bomb evidently still has plenty of friends.

When writing of the pro-nuclear constituency, a tone of ridicule comes easily. I could describe the kookier efforts of nuclear scientists and apparatchiks-from neutron bombs to mini-nukes. I could make fun of the vocabulary, from mushroom clouds, to Davy Crocketts, red beards, broken arrows, and peacekeepers. I could recount the dark side-the tests at Bikini, the human radiation experiments, Silkwood, Thule, Palomares, Rocky Flats. This is a history and geography that makes the nuclear elite wince.

While ridicule is great for sound bites, it alienates not just the custodians but the arms control community as well. The arms controllers are hampered by their own Cold War history, when they pushed for incremental change to lessen the danger of global nuclear war, always mindful not to challenge the fundamental existence of nuclear weapons. Today, they struggle to be "relevant" and helpful. Yet in their unreformed reverence for the bomb in its deterrent role, they delude themselves into thinking that incremental change could lead to an Eden of "minimum deterrence."

However, if nuclear weapons ever were relevant and kept the peace, it was because they were very much in evidence, because nuclear adversaries were conscious of one another's potential inclination to use them. As the weapons declined in number, in the extent of deployment, and in prominence, they lost that very intrusive quality. Nuclear weapons are intrinsically colossal in their demands. In the nuclear realm, minimum anything is not possible, while the state of nuclear dominance is unacceptable.

As the Cold War struggled through its final decade, the arms control establishment gained the grudging acquiescence of nuclear advocates, men and women who have always known that nuclear weapons can only survive if they are relatively invisible. Get nuclear weapons off the front pages, whether through secrecy or arms control treaties-that was the way to keep control of the machine and to insure modernization and advance.

But that was yesterday. Today nuclear weapons are virtually invisible. So much so that ordinary people just don't pay any attention to them anymore. In fact, all of the evidence points to the undeniable conclusion that the nuclear era is over and nuclear weapons are organically withering on the vine. But we'd never know it.

A governmental commitment to nuclear disarmament would be irrelevant, of course, if the nuclear weapons enterprise were satisfied to completely wither away. But it isn't. And so on top of the we-need-nukes-because-nukes-exist conundrum, there is the self-interest of organizations and industries wedded to the bomb.

Any commitment to abolition is rejected on the basis of technical impossibility. Which is to say that the very scientists and engineers who constructed and controlled tens of thousands of warheads for 50 years seemingly cannot put their minds to undoing it all. Their modesty is increasingly transparent.

Yet this cycle will not be broken solely through caution and a Butler-esque professional courtesy that avoids naming names, a politeness that never condemns the anti-disarmament forces that still grind away just as vigorously as Butler did when he worked his way up in the nuclear enterprise.

Nuclear disarmament will not occur just because well-meaning scientists, bureaucrats and military officers chip away at the grotesque arithmetic, "revise" the war plan to make it more humane, repair the most egregious excesses.

Butler is dead-on, of course, in saying that a real commitment to the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament is essential. But while he came out of the trance and is now speaking up, his failure to point fingers does not really explain the dynamics of the final battle. The anonymity of the problem he describes is completely at odds with the gravity of the issues he says are at stake.

Little noticed during the Christmas season was the response of Gen. Eugene Habiger, the current head of U.S. Strategic Command, to the generals' and admirals' initiative. Calling the weapons a "viable part" of U.S. national security strategy, Habiger told Defense Daily that he would undertake a spread-the-message strategy, personally visiting members of Congress one-on-one to promote his product. "I will tell them that we've got a sharp team of superstars and that we are committed to making sure our national strategy of deterrence is viable and credible," he said.

"I hope eventually we come to zero nuclear weapons, but we need to do it in a prudent manner so that we don't compromise national security," he continued. "We can't afford another Pearl Harbor-with nuclear weapons."

Habiger's justification for the bomb should remind everyone that Butler and his colleagues are the exception and not the rule. The bomb survives all attempts to dominate it. Reduced in numbers, its essential quality remains intact, resistant to partial solutions and a quiet retirement.

Butler comes very late to the abolition mission. His voice and support are welcome. Perhaps he will use his insider's knowledge to break the cycle.

William M. Arkin is an independent expert on defense matters, a Bulletin contributing editor, and the author of the "The Last Word," a column that closes each issue of the Bulletin.