[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 15 (Wednesday, February 25, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S948-S952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GENERAL LEE BUTLER
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to raise one of
the most critical issues facing this nation today, nuclear weapons
security, and to call the Senate's attention to one of the most
intelligent and courageous people involved in the debate surrounding
this issue, General Lee Butler.
At a National Press Club appearance earlier this month, General
Butler delivered an eloquent address entitled, ``The Risks Of Nuclear
Deterrence: From Superpowers To Rogue Leaders.'' His major conclusion
was that, ``. . . as a nation we have no greater responsibility than to
bring the nuclear era
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to a close. Our present policies, plans, and postures governing nuclear
weapons make us prisoners still to an age of intolerable danger.''
For those unfamiliar with General Butler, let me provide some
background on this distinguished American that should add some context
to his remarks. After graduating from the Air Force Academy, General
Butler spent the next 33 years advancing through the ranks of the U.S.
Air Force.
In 1991, he was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Strategic
Air Command and, shortly thereafter, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.
Strategic Command. In this last post, General Butler was responsible
for the overall U.S. strategy for deterring a nuclear war and, if
deterrence fails, fighting such a war.
It is safe to say that very few Americans know as much as General
Butler when it comes to nuclear weapons and their role in our national
security posture--from the concrete, such as the physics of these
weapons, to the more abstract, such as deterrence theory. When General
Butler speaks about nuclear deterrence, people should listen.
In his National Press Club address, General Butler spoke of the
lessons he has drawn from over 30 years of ``intimate involvement with
nuclear weapons.'' I ask that his full statement be included in the
Record following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, so ordered.
(See Exhibit 1.)
Mr. DASCHLE. General Butler summarizes his experience in the
following terms:
I came to a set of deeply unsettling judgments. That from
the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and
consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed
by those who brandished it. That the stakes of nuclear war
engage not just the survival of the antagonists, but the fate
of mankind. That the likely consequences of nuclear war have
no politically, militarily, or morally acceptable
justification. And therefore, that the threat to use nuclear
weapons is indefensible.
General Butler goes on to note that for much of the Cold War period
up to the present, America's massive nuclear arsenal was justified and
sustained on the basis of a single concept: deterrence. However, his
experience and analysis led him to the inherent flaw in the concept of
deterrence.
Deterrence failed completely as a guide in setting rational
limits on the size and composition of military forces. To the
contrary, its appetite was voracious, its capacity to justify
new weapons and larger stocks unrestrained. Deterrence
carried the seed . . . that spurred an insatiable arms race.
Mr. President, the consequences of this paradox remain with us
today--despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
Consider where the world is with respect to nuclear weapons as we
approach the end of the 20th century--over 50 years since man developed
the first nuclear device.
First, the United States and Russia together still field nearly
15,000 strategic nuclear weapons--each with a destructive power tens or
hundreds of times greater than the nuclear devices that brought World
War II to a close. The closest rival, friend or foe, has less than 500
strategic weapons.
Second, the United States and Russia each still deploy large numbers
of tactical nuclear weapons. According to unclassified sources, the
United States has about 500 to 1,000 operational tactical nuclear
weapons, and the Russians have about 4,000.
Third, both the United States and Russia continue to operate large
numbers of their strategic weapons, roughly 5,000 weapons between them,
on a high level of alert, ready to be launched at a moment's notice. As
noted by Senator Sam Nunn and Dr. Bruce Blair, ``while [this] practice
may have been necessary during the Cold War, today it constitutes a
dangerous anachronism.''
Fourth, the United States and Russia continue to adhere to nuclear
plans that permit the first use of nuclear weapons and allow for the
launch of weapons after receiving warning of attack but before incoming
warheads detonate.
Mr. President, this is truly a very troubling state of affairs, made
all the more so by the fact that the Cold War has dissipated and our
major adversary during this period, the Soviet Union, has long since
ceased to exist. General Butler's conclusion is that the United States
and the world should aspire to the abolition of all nuclear weapons.
General Butler makes a very compelling case for this lofty yet
pragmatic goal. And, as General Butler will be the first to note, it is
not one that can be quickly or easily achieved. It will essentially
require putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle and being able to
verify that no country tries to let it out.
This is a very difficult task to say the least, and one that
ultimately may not be achievable. But that is no reason not to try.
There is an old saying that, if you shoot for the stars and miss, you
still could hit the moon. If in shooting for the ultimate objective of
nuclear elimination we take lesser steps that enhance our security,
then the journey will have been worthwhile.
At his National Press Club speech, General Butler released a letter
signed by 117 leaders from 46 countries that calls for the immediate
removal of nuclear weapons from alert status, an end to nuclear
testing, the beginning of discussions on deeper reductions in the U.S.
and Russian nuclear arsenals, and the development of a plan for
eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. Among the signatories were
Mikhail Gorbachev, President Carter and Helmut Schmidt.
In this regard, there are 3 initiatives the United States could take
immediately to begin this journey to reduce the threat of nuclear
weapons: dealerting a portion of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear
weapons, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and pushing for
much deeper reductions in nuclear weapons than currently contemplated
in START II.
Each of these steps make sense in isolation. Together, they will lead
to a safer world, and one much closer to that envisioned in the
poignant remarks delivered by General Butler.
Exhibit 1
The Risks of Nuclear Deterrence: From Super Powers to Rogue Leaders
(An Address by Gen. Lee Butler to the National Press Club, Washington,
DC., 2 February 1998)
Thank you, and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Dorene
and I are honored by your presence and gratified by your
welcome. Although we are now proud residents of Nebraska--
note the obligatory display of home team colors--Dorene and I
feel very much at home in this city. I see many familiar
faces in this audience, which makes the moment all the more
special.
I have two roles to serve this afternoon, both very much
akin to the events marking my appearance here just over a
year ago. As your speaker, I intend to address two matters
that go to the Heart of the Debate over the Role of Nuclear
Weapons: Why these artifacts of the cold war continue to hold
us in thrall; and the severe penalties and risks entailed by
policies of deterrence as practiced in the nuclear age.
But first, it is my privilege to announce a compelling
addition to the roster of distinguished international figures
who have joined their voices in calling publicly for the
abolition of nuclear weapons. Last year General Goodpaster
and I unveiled a list of some 60 retired generals and
admirals from a host of nations who declared their strong
conviction that the world would be better served by the total
elimination of these weapons. Today, at a press conference
following my remarks, Senator Alan Cranston and I will
present the names of more than one hundred present and former
heads of state and other senior civilian leaders who have
signed their names to a powerful statement of common concern
regarding nuclear weapons and who have endorsed a reasoned
path toward abolition.
The willingness of this extraordinary assembly to speak so
publicly and directly to these issues is very much in keeping
with what I have experienced since I became engaged in the
abolition debate some two years ago. I have met legions of
remarkable men and women from every corner of the earth who
have labored long and patiently in this cause. Their ranks
have now been swelled by tens of millions of citizens of our
planet who reject the prospect of living in perpetuity under
a nuclear Sword of Damocles.
My purpose in entering the debate was to help legitimize
abolition as an alternative worthy of serious and urgent
consideration. My premise was that my unique experience in
the nuclear weapons arena might help kindle greater antipathy
for these horrific devices and the policies which justify
their retention by the nuclear weapon states. My purpose this
afternoon is to share with you the abiding concern I harbor
about the course of the debate. I accepted the Press Club
invitation because I believe this forum is well suited to
speak to that concern. In so doing, I intend to render a much
more explicit account than I have given to date of the
lessons I have drawn from over thirty years of intimate
involvement with nuclear weapons.
Permit me, however, to preface my remarks by postulating
that with respect to legitimizing the prospect of abolition,
there is
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much to applaud on the positive side of the ledger. Nuclear
issues now compete more strongly for the attention of policy
makers and the media that often shapes their interest.
Converts are being won on many fronts to the propositions
that these issues matter, that nuclear arsenals can and
should be sharply reduced, that high alert postures are a
dangerous anachronism, that first use policies are an affront
to democratic values, and that proliferation of nuclear
weapons is a clear and present danger. I am persuaded that in
every corner of the planet, the tide of public sentiment is
now running strongly in favor of diminishing the role of
nuclear weapons. Indeed, I am convinced that most publics are
well out in front of their governments in shaking off the
grip of the cold war in reaching for opportunities that
emerge in its wake.
Conversely, it is distressingly evident that for many
people, nuclear weapons retain an aura of utility, of primacy
and of legitimacy that justifies their existence well into
the future, in some number, however small. The persistence of
this view, which is perfectly reflected in the recently
announced modification of U.S. nuclear weapons policy, lies
at the core of the concern that moves me so deeply. This
abiding faith in nuclear weapons was inspired and is
sustained by a catechism instilled over many decades by a
priesthood who speak with great assurance and authority. I
was for many years among the most avid of these keepers of
the faith in nuclear weapons, and for that I make no apology.
Like my contemporaries, I was moved by fears and fired by
beliefs that date back to the earliest days of the atomic
era. We lived through a terror-ridden epoch punctuated by
crisis whose resolution held hostage the saga of humankind.
For us, nuclear weapons were the savior that brought an
implacable foe to his knees in 1945 and held another at bay
for nearly a half-century. We believed that superior
technology brought strategic advantage, that greater numbers
meant stronger security, and that the ends of containment
justified whatever means were necessary to achieve them.
These are powerful, deeply rooted beliefs. They cannot and
should not be lightly dismissed or discounted. Strong
arguments can be made on their behalf. Throughout my
professional military career, I shared them, I professed them
and I put them into operational practice. And now it is my
burden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster
that in my judgment they served us extremely ill. They
account for the most severe risks and most extravagant costs
of the U.S.-Soviet confrontation. They intensified and
prolonged an already acute ideological animosity. They
spawned successive generations of new and more destructive
nuclear devices and delivery systems. They gave rise to
mammoth bureaucracies with gargantuan appetites and global
agendas. They incited primal emotions, spurred zealotry and
demagoguery, and set in motion forces of ungovernable scope
and power. Most importantly, these enduring beliefs, and the
fears that underlie them, perpetuate cold war policies and
practices that make no strategic sense. They continue to
entail enormous costs and expose all mankind to
unconscionable dangers. I find that intolerable. Thus, I
cannot stay silent. I know too much of these matters, the
frailties, the flaws, the failures of policy and practice.
At the same time, I cannot overstate the difficulty this
poses for me. No one who ever entered the nuclear arena left
it with a fuller understanding of its complexity nor greater
respect for those with whom I served its purposes. I struggle
constantly with the task of articulating the evolution of my
convictions without denigrating or diminishing the motives
and sacrifices of countless colleagues with whom I lived the
drama of the cold war. I ask them and you to appreciate that
my purpose is not to accuse, but to assess, to understand and
to propound the forces that birthed the grotesque excesses
and hazards of the nuclear age. For me, that assessment meant
first coming to grips with my experience and then coming to
terms with my conclusions.
I knew the moment I entered the nuclear arena I had been
thrust into a world beset with tidal forces, towering egos,
maddening contradictions, alien constructs and insane risks.
Its arcane vocabulary and apocalyptic calculus defied
comprehension. Its stage was global and its antagonists
locked in a deadly spiral of deepening rivalry. It was in
every respect a modern day holy war, a cosmic struggle
between the forces of light and darkness. The stakes were
national survival, and the weapons of choice were eminently
suited to this scale of malevolence.
The opposing forces each created vast enterprises, each
giving rise to a culture of Messianic believers infused with
a sense of historic mission and schooled in unshakable
articles of faith. As my own career progressed, I was
immersed in the work of all of these cultures, either
directly in those of the Western World, or through
penetrating study of communist organizations, teachings and
practices. My responsibilities ranged from the highly
subjective, such as assessing the values and motivation of
Soviet leadership, to the critically objective, such as
preparing weapons for operational launch. I became steeped in
the art of intelligence estimates, the psychology of
negotiations, the interplay of bureaucracies and the impulses
of industry. I was engaged in the labyrinthian conjecture of
the strategist, the exacting routines of the target planner
and the demanding skills of the aircrew and the missilier. I
have been a party to their history, shared their triumphs and
tragedies, witnessed heroic sacrifice and catastrophic
failure of both men and machines. And in the end, I came away
from it all with profound misgivings.
Ultimately, as I examined the course of this journey, as
the lessons of decades of intimate involvement took greater
hold on my intellect, I came to a set of deeply unsettling
judgements. That from the earliest days of the nuclear era,
the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been
properly weighed by those who brandished it. That the stakes
of nuclear war engage not just the survival of the
antagonists, but the fate of mankind. That the likely
consequences of nuclear war have no politically, militarily
or morally acceptable justification. And therefore, that the
threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible.
These judgements gave rise to an array of inescapable
questions. If this be so, what explained the willingness, no,
the zeal, of legions of cold warriors, civilian and military,
to not just tolerate but to multiply and to perpetuate such
risks? By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders
in the nuclear weapons states usurp the power to dictate the
odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does
such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should
stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our
commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestation?
These are not questions to be left to historians. The
answers matter to us now. They go to the heart of present day
policies and motivations. They convey lessons with immediate
implications for both contemporary and aspiring nuclear
states. As I distill them from the experience of three
decades in the nuclear arena, these lessons resolve into two
fundamental conclusions.
First, I have no other way to understand the willingness to
condone nuclear weapons except to believe they are the
natural accomplice of visceral enmity. They thrive in the
emotional climate born of utter alienation and isolation. The
unbounded wantonness of their effects is a perfect companion
to the urge to destroy completely. They play on our deepest
fears and pander to our darkest instincts. They corrode our
sense of humanity, numb our capacity for moral outrage, and
make thinkable the unimaginable. What is anguishingly clear
is that these fears and enmities are no respecter of
political systems or values. They prey on democracies and
totalitarian societies alike, shrinking the norms of
civilized behavior and dimming the prospects for escaping the
savagery so powerfully imprinted in our genetic code. That
should give us great pause as we imagine the task of
abolition in a world that gives daily witness to acts of
unspeakable barbarism. So should it compound our resolve.
The evidence to support this conclusion is palpable, but as
I said at the outset of these remarks for much of my life I
saw it differently. That was a product of my both my
citizenry and my profession. From the early years of my
childhood and through much of my military service I saw the
Soviet Union and its allies as a demonic threat, an evil
empire bent on global domination. I was commissioned as an
officer in the United States air force as the cold war was
heating to a fever pitch. This was a desperate time that
evoked on both sides extreme responses in policy, in
technology and in force postures: Bloody purges and political
inquisitions; covert intelligence schemes that squandered
lives and subverted governments; atmospheric testing with
little understanding or regard for the long term effects;
threats of massive nuclear retaliation to an ill-defined
scope of potential provocations; the forced march of
inventive genius that ushered in the missile age arm in arm
with the capacity for spontaneous, global, destruction;
reconnaissance aircraft that probed or violated sovereign
airspace, producing disastrous encounters; the menacing and
perilous practice of airborne alert bombers loaded with
nuclear weapons.
By the early 1960's, a superpower nuclear arms race was
underway that would lead to a ceaseless amassing of
destructive capacity, spilling over into the arsenals of
other nations. Central Europe became a powder keg, trembling
under the shadow of Armageddon, hostage to a bizarre strategy
that required the prospect of nuclear devastation as the
price of alliance. The entire world became a stage for the
U.S.-Soviet rivalry. International organizations were
paralyzed by its grip. East-West confrontation dominated the
nation-state system. Every quarrel and conflict was fraught
with potential for global war.
This was the world that largely defined our lives as
American citizens. For those of us who served in the national
security arena, the threat was omnipresent, if seemed total,
it dictated our professional preparation and career
progression, and cost the lives of tens of thousands of men
and women, in and out of uniform. Like millions of others, I
was caught up in the holy war, inured to its costs and
consequences, trusting in the wisdom of succeeding
generations of military and civilian leaders. The first
requirement of unconditional belief in the efficacy of
nuclear weapons was early and perfectly met for us: Our
homeland was the target of a consuming evil, poised to strike
without warning and without mercy.
What remained for me, as my career took its particular
course, was to master the intellectual underpinning of
America's response, the strategic foundation that today
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still stands as the central precept of the nuclear catechism.
Reassessing its pervasive impact on attitudes toward nuclear
weapons goes directly to my second conclusion regarding the
willingness to tolerate the risks of the nuclear age.
That also brings me to the focal point of my remarks, to my
purpose in coming to this forum. For all of my years as a
nuclear strategist, operational commander and public
spokesman, I explained, justified and sustained America's
massive nuclear arsenal as a function, a necessity and a
consequence of deterrence. Bound up in this singular term,
this familiar touchstone of security dating back to
antiquity, was the intellectually comforting and deceptively
simple justification for taking the most extreme risks and
the expenditure of trillions of dollars. It was our shield
and by extension our sword. The nuclear priesthood extolled
its virtues, and bowed to its demands. Allies yielded
grudgingly to its dictates even while decrying its risks and
costs. We brandished it at our enemies and presumed they
embraced its suicidal corollary of mutual assured
destruction. We ignored, discounted or dismissed its flaws
and cling still to the belief that it obtains in a world
whose security architecture has been wholly transformed.
But now, I see it differently. Not in some blinding
revelation, but at the end of a journey, in an age of
deliverance from the consuming tensions of the cold war. Now,
with the evidence more clear, the risks more sharply defined
and the costs more fully understood, I see deterrence in a
very different light. Appropriated from the lexicon of
conventional warfare, this simple prescription for
adequate military preparedness became in the Nuclear Age a
formula for unmitigated catastrophe. It was premised on a
litany of unwarranted assumptions, unprovable assertions
and logical contradictions. It suspended rational thinking
about he ultimate aim of National security: to ensure the
survival of the Nation.
How is it that we subscribed to a strategy that required
near perfect understanding of an enemy from whom we were
deeply alienated and largely isolated? How could we pretend
to understand the motivations and intentions of the Soviet
leadership absent any substantive personal association? Why
did we imagine a Nation that had survived successive
invasions and mindnumbing losses would accede to a strategy
premised on fear of Nuclear War? Deterrence in the cold war
setting was fatally flawed at the most fundamental level of
human psychology in its projection of Western reason through
the crazed lens of a paranoid foe. Little wonder that
intentions and motives were consistently misread. Little
wonder that deterrence was the first victim of a deepening
crisis, leaving the antagonists to grope fearfully in a fog
of mutual misperception. While we clung to the notion that
Nuclear War could be reliably deterred, Soviet leaders
derived from their historical experience the conviction that
such a war might be thrust upon them and if so, mut not be
lost. Driven by that fear, they took Herculean measures to
fight and survive no matter the odds or the costs. Deterrence
was a dialogue of the blind with the deaf. In the final
analysis, it was largely a bargain we in the West made with
ourselves.
Deterrence was flawed equally in that the consequences of
its failure were intolerable. While the price of undeterred
aggression in the age of uniquely conventional weaponry could
be severe, history teaches that Nations can survive and even
prosper in the aftermath of unconditional defeat. Not so in
the nuclear era. Nuclear weapons give no quarter. Their
effects transcend time and place, poisoning the Earth and
deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation.
They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for
meaningful survival. They hold in their sway not just the
fate of Nations, but the very meaning of civilization.
Deterrence failed completely as a guide in setting rational
limits on the size and composition of military forces. To the
contrary, its appetite was voracious, its capacity to justify
new weapons and larger stocks unrestrained. Deterrence
carried the seed, born of an irresolvable internal
contradiction, that spurred an insatiable arms race. Nuclear
deterrence hinges on the credibility to mount a devastating
retaliation under the most extreme conditions of war
initiation. Perversely, the redundant and survivable force
required to meet this exacting text is readily perceived by a
darkly suspicious adversary as capable, even designed, to
execute a disarming first strike. Such advantage can never be
conceded between nuclear rivals. It must be answered,
reduced, nullified. Fears are fanned, the rivalry
intensified. New technology is inspired, new systems roll
from production lines. The correlation of force begins to
shift, and the bar of deterrence ratchets higher, igniting
yet another cycle of trepidation, worst case assumptions and
ever mounting levels of destructive capability.
Thus it was that the treacherous axioms of deterrence made
seemingly reasonable nuclear weapon stockpiles numbering in
the tens of thousands. Despite having witnessed the
devastation wrought by two primitive atomic devices, over the
ensuing decades the superpowers gorged themselves at the
thermonuclear trough. A succession of leaders on both sides
of the East-West divide directed a reckless proliferation of
nuclear devices, tailored for delivery by a vast array of
vehicles to a stupefying array of targets. They nurtured,
richly rewarded, even revealed in the industrial base
required to support production at such levels.
I was part of all of that. I was present at the creation of
many of these systems, directly responsible for prescribing
and justifying the requirements and technology that made them
possible. I saw the arms race from the inside, watched
as intercontinental ballistic missiles ushered in mutual
assured destruction and multiple warhead missiles
introduced genuine fear of a nuclear first strike. I
participated in the elaboration of basing schemes that
bordered on the comical and force levels that in
retrospect defied reason. I was responsible for war plans
with over 12,000 targets, many struck with repeated
nuclear blows, some to the point of complete absurdity. I
was a veteran participant in an arena where the most
destructive power ever unleashed became the prize in a no
holds barred competition among organizations whose
principal interest was to enhance rather than constrain
its application. And through every corridor, in every
impassioned plea, in every fevered debate range the
rallying cry, deterrence, deterrence, deterrence.
As nuclear weapons and actors multiplied, deterrence took
on too many names, too many roles, overreaching an already
extreme strategic task. Surely nuclear weapons summoned great
caution in superpower relationships. But as their numbers
swelled, so mounted the stakes of miscalculation, of a crisis
spun out of control. The exorbitant price of nuclear war
quickly exceeded the rapidly depreciating value of a tenuous
mutual wariness. Invoking deterrence became a cheap
rhetorical parlor trick, a verbal sleight of hand. Proponents
persist in dressing it up to court changing times and
temperaments, hemming and re-hemming to fit shrinking or
distorted threats.
Deterrence is a slippery conceptual slope. It is not
stable, nor is it static, its wiles cannot be contained. It
is both master and slave. It seduces the scientist yet bends
to his creation. It serves the ends of evil as well as those
of noble intent. It holds guilty the innocent as well as the
culpable. It gives easy semantic cover to nuclear weapons,
masking the horrors of employment with siren veils of
infallibility. At best it is a gamble no mortal should
pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale
rivaling the power of the creator.
Is it any wonder that at the end of my journey I am moved
so strongly to retrace its path, to examine more closely the
evidence I would or could not see? I hear not the voices long
ignored, the warnings muffled by the still lingering
animosities of the cold war. I see with painful clarity that
from the very beginnings of the nuclear era. The objective
scrutiny and searching debate essential to adequate
comprehension and responsible oversight of its vast
enterprises were foreshortened or foregone. The cold light of
dispassionate scrutiny was shuttered in the name of security,
doubts dismissed in the name of an acute and unrelenting
threat, objections overruled by the incantations of the
nuclear priesthood.
The penalties proved to be severe. Vitally important
decisions were routinely taken without adequate
understanding, assertions too often prevailed over analysis,
requirements took on organizational biases, technological
opportunity and corporate profit drove force levels and
capability, and political opportunism intruded on
calculations of military necessity. Authority and
accountability were severed, policy dissociated from
planning, and theory invalidated by practice. The narrow
concerns of a multitude of powerful interests intruded on the
rightful role of key policymakers, constraining their
latitude for decision. Many were simply denied access to
critical information essential to the proper exercise of
their office.
Over time, planning was increasingly distanced and
ultimately disconnected from any sense of scientific or
military reality. In the end, the nuclear powers, great and
small, created astronomically expensive infrastructures,
monolithic bureaucracies and complex processes that defied
control or comprehension. Only now are the dimensions, costs
and risks of these nuclear nether worlds coming to light.
What must now be better-understood are the root causes, the
mindsets and the belief systems that brought them into
existence. They must be challenged, they must be refuted, but
most importantly, they must be let go. The era that gave them
credence, accepted their dominion and yielded to their
excesses is fast receding.
But it is not yet over. Sad to say, the Cold War lives on
in the minds of those who cannot let go the fears, the
beliefs, and the enmities born of the nuclear age. They cling
to deterrence, clutch its tattered promise to their breast,
shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new
or imagined ones. They are gripped still by its awful
willingness not simply to tempt the apocalypse but to prepare
its way.
What better illustration of misplaced faith in nuclear
deterrence than the persistent belief that retaliation with
nuclear weapons is a legitimate and appropriate response to
post-cold war threats posed by weapons of mass destruction.
What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we
properly abhor and condemn? Who can imagine our joining in
shattering the precedent of non-use that has held for over
fifty years? How could America's irreplaceable role as leader
of the campaign against nuclear proliferation ever be re-
justified? What target would warrant such retaliation? Would
we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a
single demented leader? How would the physical effects of the
nuclear explosion be
[[Page S952]]
contained, not to mention the political and moral
consequences? In a singular act we would martyr our enemy,
alienate our friends, give comfort to the non-declared
nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons
covertly. In short, such a response on the part of the United
States is inconceivable. It would irretrievably diminish our
priceless stature as a nation noble in aspiration and
responsible in conduct, even in the face of extreme
provocation.
And as a nation we have no greater responsibility than to
bring the nuclear era to a close. Our present policies, plans
and postures governing nuclear weapons make us prisoner still
to an age of intolerable danger. We cannot at once keep
sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the
capacity to destroy it. We cannot hold hostage to sovereign
gridlock the keys to final deliverance from the nuclear
nightmare. We cannot withhold the resources essential to
break its grip, to reduce its dangers. We cannot sit in
silent acquiescence to the faded homilies of the nuclear
priesthood. It is time to reassert the primacy of individual
conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interests of
humanity.
____________________