[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 27 (Tuesday, March 12, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H790-H791]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




THE PRESIDENT'S NEW NUCLEAR POSTURE PAPER: HOW MANY THINGS CAN WE FIND 
                        WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, this new nuclear posture paper that the Bush 
administration has presented itself, from the Pentagon to the 
President, looks like an entry in a contest as to how many things can 
we find wrong with this picture.
  To begin, most shockingly, it proposes to reduce the barrier that has 
long existed against the use of nuclear weapons. It proposes that we 
consider using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations. It proposes 
using nuclear weapons in a variety of ways previously uncontemplated, 
or at least not advocated in our policy.
  There are several things, of course, wrong with that. In the first 
place, any American policy of trying to discourage other countries to 
develop nuclear weapons could not be more seriously undermined by 
anything we do.

                              {time}  1300

  The town drunk is not going to be very credible preaching temperance, 
and having America threaten a more promiscuous use of nuclear weapons 
makes no sense whatsoever. If, in fact, the policy were to be carried 
out, it would, of course, add greatly to the billions that would be 
spent in development of these newer weapons to be used in new 
situations, further straining our ability to meet important domestic 
needs. It could very well mean a violation of the proposal of the 
nuclear test ban treaty and of our, up until now, policy of not 
testing.
  Reducing the psychological, physical, strategic barrier to the use of 
nuclear weapons is a very, very poor policy; but there is a silver 
lining. As with the proposal to have the Pentagon lie to us and others, 
as with the proposal to use military tribunals in place of the American 
domestic courts, as the Attorney General once suggested, we are now 
being told, well, never mind.
  The Pentagon has developed a very interesting approach and the Bush 
administration with it. This is the third time we have seen very, very 
extreme proposals which when they encounter resistance we are told we 
should not have paid a great deal of attention to.
  I am unpersuaded that the proposals were not meant in the first 
place. I am pleased in the face of the very wide and very thoughtful 
criticism that these proposals have brought forth the administration 
backs down; but we cannot be sure that they have totally disappeared 
and of all of the proposals this suggestion, more than a suggestion, 
this policy review urging more use of nuclear weapons in more 
situations against more countries is really quite frightening.
  The President has justly commanded virtually unanimous support in the 
United States in his defense of America against terrorism. It cannot be 
in our interests for him to raise serious questions about his judgment 
in other strategic areas.
  It is important that this policy not simply be characterized as a 
mere option but, in fact, repudiated thoroughly. There cannot be 
continuing suggestion, even more than a suggestion, that the United 
States contemplates this sort of use of nuclear weapons. Its impact on 
our alliances will be corrosive. It will have a negative, rather than a 
positive, effect on our ability to persuade even those countries to 
which we are opposed to respond in sensible ways.
  The President's effort to work out some kind of role with Russia is 
undermined by this and particularly by the suggestion when he says he 
is going to take some nuclear weapons down, he simply means putting 
them in another place. This clearly undermines our efforts to reach 
agreement with China, with Russia and with a whole range of other 
countries; and it is a very embarrassing episode for the United States. 
I am pleased that the administration now appears to be backtracking, 
but it is important that we make sure that this one does not rise 
again.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record at this point 
some very good discussions of the absolute fallacy of this proposal, 
today's editorial from the New York Times, ``America as Nuclear 
Rogue''; today's editorial from the Boston Globe, ``A Twisted 
Posture''; and a very good article in today's Boston Globe by the 
writer Thomas Oliphant entitled, ``Bush's Stealth Policy on Nuclear 
Arms.''
  I hope, Mr. Speaker, that this is the last time the Pentagon is going 
to play this game of putting forward something that is so demoralizing 
that it has to be withdrawn. We would be much better if these kinds of 
grave errors were not made in the first place.

                 [From the Boston Globe, Mar. 12, 2002]

                    Bush's Stealth Policy on N-Arms

                          (By Thomas Oliphant)

       Washington.--It is not simply the fresh list of countries 
     that the United States is willing to consider nuking someday.
       What is truly significant--as well as stupid, scary, and 
     outrageous--is the almost casual breaking of long-standing 
     policy taboos about the unthinkable and the implications of 
     this cavalier attitude for relations with the rest of the 
     world and for future arms races.
       The Russians and Chinese already know the United States is 
     unilaterally departing from the 1972 treaty effectively 
     banning missile defense systems. Now the world has reason to 
     doubt the American commitment to the 1974 treaty to guard 
     against nuclear proliferation as well as the honesty and good 
     will of Bush administration ``pledges'' to cut back our post-
     Cold War nuclear arsenal and to maintain a moratorium on 
     testing.
       The cover story the administration sought to peddle on last 
     weekend's TV talk shows--via Secretary of State Colin Powell 
     and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice--is that 
     contingency plans to target Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North 
     Korea, Russia, and China are more theoretical exercises than 
     serious policy work and that no special notice need be taken.
       The cover story is belied by actual intentions as revealed 
     to Congress in a freshly completed Nuclear Posture Review and 
     in the very faint, fine print of the recently unveiled Bush 
     budget. Over the weekend the headline-making list of 
     countries leaked from Capitol Hill, but as part of a leak of 
     the underlying policy document that began four weeks ago.
       On Feb. 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council--well-
     known for its thorough, documented research--put out the 
     first detailed

[[Page H791]]

     summary of the posture review that had been ordered by 
     Congress in late 2000 and of a special briefing the Defense 
     Department has conducted on the document--without the secret 
     list of countries.
       At the time, no one really noticed. With the addition of 
     the countries, The Los Angeles Times got noticed. Here's the 
     council's highly critical but accurate summary view four 
     weeks ago:
       ``Behind the administration's rhetorical mask of post-Cold 
     War restraint lie expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear 
     forces and all the elements that support them, within a so-
     called ``New Triad'' of capabilities that combine nuclear and 
     conventional offensive strikes with missile defenses and 
     nuclear weapons intrastructure.''
       If the basic purpose of nuclear weapons since the end of 
     World War II had been to prevent their use and proliferation, 
     the deadly serious review by the Bush administration--with 
     the force plans and massive spending as accompaniments--
     results in a doctrine that contemplates their use and appears 
     indifferent to their proliferation.
       Numbers tell a large chunk of the story. When the 
     administration's intention unilaterally to abrogate the ABM 
     treaty was made known, President Bush made much of a supposed 
     intention to reduce its supply of deployed warheads from 
     roughly 8,000 to below 4,000 in 2007 and eventually to 
     between 1,700 and 2,200.
       What the posture review actually reveals is a plan to cut 
     ``immediate force requirements'' for ``operationally deployed 
     forces.'' What's going on here is more a change of terms than 
     in posture, hidden by a new, gobbledygook accounting system 
     that the council properly declared ``worthy of Enron.''
       Behind the clearly visible nuclear inventory, the council 
     found a ``huge, hidden arsenal.'' It included, but no longer 
     ``counted,'' warheads on two Trident submarines being 
     overhauled at all times, as well as 160 more now listed as 
     ``spare.'' It included nearly 5,000 intact warheads now in a 
     status called ``inactive reserve,'' not to mention a few 
     thousand more bombs and cruise missile warheads as part of a 
     new ``responsive force.'' And on top of that there is to be a 
     stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium and other components 
     from which thousands more weapons could be assembled quickly. 
     Extrapolating the information, the Defense Council estimated 
     that the United States would have a total of 10,590 warheads 
     at the end of 2006, compared with 10,656 this year.
       And there's more. The administration's posture review also 
     discloses plans to greatly expand the nuclear war 
     infrastructure and to prepare for a resumption of testing, in 
     part to make possible a new generation of warheads that could 
     penetrate deep into the ground.
       The rules of the nuclear road from the U.S. perspective 
     have never included a flat-out promise never to be the first 
     combatant to resort to nuclear war. During the Cold War, the 
     United States was always prepared to go nuclear to stop a 
     massive, conventional attack from the east in Europe, and 
     before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein got a stern message that 
     all bets were off if he used chemical or biological weapons.
       But this is different. This is a plan to use nukes in 
     conventional war-fighting and to maintain a Cold War-sized 
     arsenal by stealth and deception. It is disgraceful.
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Mar. 12, 2002]

                        America as Nuclear Rogue

       If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear 
     weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list 
     of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that 
     nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course 
     recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning 
     paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send 
     that document back to its authors and ask for a new version 
     less menacing to the security of future American generations.
       The paper, the Nuclear Posture Review, proposes lowering 
     the overall number of nuclear warheads, but widens the 
     circumstances thought to justify a possible nuclear response 
     and expands the list of countries considered potential 
     nuclear targets. It envisions, for example, an American 
     president threatening nuclear retaliation in case of ``an 
     Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, or a North Korean 
     attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the 
     status of Taiwan.''
       In a world where numerous countries are developing nuclear, 
     biological and chemical weapons, it is quite right that 
     America retain a credible nuclear deterrent. Where the 
     Pentagon review goes very wrong is in lowering the threshold 
     for using nuclear weapons and in undermining the 
     effectiveness of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
       The treaty, long America's main tool for discouraging non-
     nuclear countries from developing nuclear weapons, is backed 
     by promises that as long as signatories stay non-nuclear and 
     avoid combat alongside a nuclear ally, they will not be 
     attacked with nuclear weapons. If the Pentagon proposals 
     become American policy, that promise would be withdrawn and 
     countries could conclude that they have no motive to stay 
     non-nuclear. In fact, they may well decide they need nuclear 
     weapons to avoid nuclear attack.
       The review also calls for the United States to develop a 
     new nuclear warhead designed to blow up deep underground 
     bunkers. Adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal 
     would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, 
     ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps 
     restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North 
     Korea and Iran.
       Since the dawn of the nuclear age, American military 
     planners have had to factor these enormously destructive 
     weapons into their calculations. Their behavior has been 
     tempered by the belief, shared by most thoughtful Americans, 
     that the weapons should be used only when the nation's most 
     basic interest or national survival is at risk, and that the 
     unrestrained use of nuclear weapons in war could end life on 
     earth as we know it. Nuclear weapons are not just another 
     part of the military arsenal. They are different, and 
     lowering the threshold for their use is reckless folly.
                                  ____


                 [From the Boston Globe, Mar. 12, 2002]

                           A Twisted Posture

       The Bush administration's classified new Nuclear Posture 
     Review, presented to Congress in early January and leaked 
     this month to the Los Angeles Times, proposes new departures 
     in the nation's military planning that are questionable at 
     best and, at worst, truly dangerous and destabilizing.
       The Nuclear Posture Review, signed by Secretary of Defense 
     Donald Rumsfeld, amounts to a blueprint for undertaking what 
     Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Center 
     at the Carnegie Endowment, calls ``a major expansion of the 
     role of nuclear weapons in US military policy.'' The new 
     posture calls for new nuclear weapons, new missions and uses 
     for those weapons, and a readiness to resume nuclear testing.
       These are among the changes in US nuclear doctrine that 
     make the leaked review dangerous. The hawkish proponents of 
     these changes were lobbying for mininukes and deep-
     penetrating bunker-busters well before the terrorist attacks 
     of Sept. 11. They were also proposing resumed nuclear testing 
     before that nightmarish atrocity. The reality, however, is 
     that nothing in the Nuclear Posture Review would be likely to 
     deter or counter the threat from terrorists sharing Osama bin 
     Laden's demented notion of a holy war against America.
       The review threatens to become destabilizing--and therefore 
     to expand rather than reduce American security risks--because 
     it recommends a lowering of the threshold for the use of 
     nuclear weapons. Until now, America's nuclear arsenal was 
     plainly meant only to deter other nuclear powers--principally 
     the defunct Soviet Union--from using against the United 
     States or from invading Western Europe.
       Now those limits on the envisaged uses of nuclear weapons 
     are to be abandoned. The new posture recommends that nuclear 
     weapons ``could be employed against targets able to withstand 
     nunnuclear attack,'' in response to another country's use of 
     chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and ``in the event 
     of surprising military developments.''
       If America, with its enormous technological and military 
     advantages, says it is willing to resort to nuclear weapons 
     under such vague conditions, what might nuclear states such 
     as India and Pakistan be willing to do? And if the Pentagon 
     conducts new tests of smaller, more usable nuclear warheads, 
     why would India, Pakistan, and China not follow suit, ending 
     the current suspension of nuclear tests and provoking a 
     nuclear arms race?
       The Pentagon's plan for enhancing ``nuclear capability'' 
     and lowering the barrier against the use of nuclear weapons 
     holds little hope of deterring new threats from terrorists or 
     being able to eradicate Saddam Hussein's bioweapons, but it 
     does increase the risk that nuclear weapons will be used in 
     war. It should be revised to preserve the purely deterrent 
     uses of nuclear weapons.

                          ____________________