By Peter Montague
The Cold War ended six years ago, and President Clinton has said, "In this new world, our children are growing up free from the shadows of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust". Unfortunately, the president is not telling the truth. The threat of nuclear war continues to worsen, according to recent reports in credible journals.
A special report in the New England Journal of Medicine, April 30, assesses the danger of an accidental launch of nuclear weapons from Russia. According to the report, an estimated 6.8 million Americans would be killed instantly, with millions more exposed to lethal doses of radiation. The likelihood of such an accident is increasing as time passes, the report concludes.
The Russians have roughly 2500 nuclear warheads poised to launch at all times. The US has an even larger number.
In 1994, Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to stop aiming strategic nuclear missiles at each others' countries. But the geographic coordinates of the original targets — many of which are cities — remain in the memory banks of all these weapons, so the nuclear warheads can be re-targeted at US and Russian cities within seconds.
Russia's ballistic missiles are reported to be more dangerous. Russia has programmed its missiles so that, if they fire accidentally without a target programmed into memory, they will automatically aim at their Cold War targets. Neither US nor Russian missiles can be commanded to self-destruct after they are launched.
Launch on warning
Both the US and Russia employ a strategy called "launch on warning". This means that each will launch a counterattack as soon as it decides that an attack has been launched against it.
Launch on warning leaves precious little time for thoughtful deliberations. Each country has submarine-based nuclear missiles within 15 minutes' striking distance of the other. Thus the country perceiving an attack will have several minutes to verify that an attack is occurring, several minutes for top-level decision making and a couple of minutes to disseminate the authorisation to launch a counter-strike. Then it's over.
Mistakes are inevitable. On January 25, 1995, Russian radar operators observed an ominous blip on their screens. It was a rocket rising into the sky somewhere off the coast of Norway. Such a rocket could conceivably deliver eight nuclear bombs to Moscow within 15 minutes, so word went out immediately throughout the Russian military command.
As the various stages of the rocket separated from each other, the radar blips made it seem as if an attack by several missiles might be under way. Yeltsin activated his "nuclear briefcase", the portable computer station which would allow him to launch a full counter-strike.
After eight minutes — with less than four minutes remaining before a counterattack would be launched under Russian launch-on-warning protocols — top officials concluded that the trajectory of the rocket was taking it out to sea. The crisis passed.
The rocket turned out to be a US scientific probe intended to explore the northern lights. The Norwegians had informed Russian authorities of the planned launch weeks before, but the message had not made its way through the Russian bureaucracy. (Washington Post, March 15, 1998.)
Crumbling systems
The system worked that night in early 1995, and catastrophe was averted. However, several nuclear weapons specialists, writing in Scientific American, recently concluded, "The systems built to control Russian nuclear weapons are now crumbling." Here is some of the evidence they presented:
- In Russia, local electric companies have repeatedly shut off power to various nuclear weapons installations after the military authorities failed to pay their electric bills.
- Equipment that controls nuclear weapons frequently malfunctions, and critical electronic devices and computers sometimes switch to combat mode for no apparent reason.
- On seven occasions during the northern autumn of 1996, operations at several nuclear weapons centres were severely disrupted when thieves tried to steal critical communications cables.
An assessment of Russian nuclear controls, written by the US CIA and leaked to the Washington Times, reached basically the same conclusion. The CIA wrote, "The Russian nuclear command and control system is being subjected to stresses it was not designed to withstand ...".
That CIA report warned of "conspiracies within nuclear armed units" to commit nuclear blackmail. "This has become a concern as living conditions and morale have deteriorated in the military, even among elite nuclear submariners, nuclear warhead handlers, and SRF", the CIA wrote. SRF is the Strategic Rocket Force, which controls Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The CIA warned that the normal chain of command has broken down in some parts of the Russian military. According to the CIA, some submarine crews may be able to launch ballistic missiles under their control without having to obtain special codes from their superiors.
In February 1997, the military institute responsible for designing the control systems for the SRF staged a one-day strike to protest against pay arrears and the lack of funds to upgrade their equipment.
Three days later, Russian defence minister Igor Rodionov said, "If the shortage of funds persists ... Russia may soon approach a threshold beyond which its missiles and nuclear systems become uncontrollable".
Two-thirds of Russia's early warning radars no longer work, and two satellites (out of nine) are missing from their satellite surveillance system.
Furthermore, about half of Russia's nuclear "early warning" radar network no longer resides on Russian soil. Disputes over funding and personnel have put the operational integrity of these systems in doubt.
These systems are the eyes and ears of Russian nuclear defence analysts; as a result, Russia is partially blind and deaf. This means Russia may have difficulty deciding the origin of a missile attack — is it a phantom radar blip, a scientific rocket gone astray, a military missile launched accidentally or a serious attack?
Personnel
The weakest link in the nuclear-weapons control system may be the humans involved. Here, we know more about the US than we do about Russia.
A 1987 report said that the US had 112,000 people involved in handling US nuclear weapons. The military has developed a Personnel Reliability Program to select them.
However, a large number of people who have gone through the Personnel Reliability Program screening have later been "decertified" — removed from their positions. Individuals are decertified if they are found guilty of negligence, serious civil infractions, repeated alcohol or drug abuse or other aberrant behaviour that might lead to unreliable performance.
According to Department of Defense figures, from 1975 to 1984 some 51,000 individuals were decertified, an average of more than 5000 each year. The majority were decertified for drug and alcohol abuse or for psychiatric problems. Therefore, at any given time, thousands of potentially unstable individuals have responsibility for handling nuclear weapons.
A 1981 survey of US personnel at military installations in Italy and West Germany found that drugs were used on duty by 43% of army personnel, 17% of air force personnel, 35% of marines and 49% of navy personnel.
Defense Department officials testified before Congress in 1982 that an estimated 28% of army personnel and 21% of navy personnel drank alcohol while on duty. The highest prevalence of drinking was among senior officers.
Russia has similar problems, but worse. About 45,000 Soviets died from acute alcohol poisoning in 1976 — 100 times the number who died of that cause in the US. Between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, per capita alcohol consumption doubled in the Soviet Union.
Alcohol abuse is reported to be more prevalent in the Russian military than among civilians. According to one estimate, one-third of Russian military personnel are alcohol-dependent, with heavy drinking especially prevalent among officers.
The Russian army has fallen on hard times. To try to maintain its status as a world power, Russia is relying more and more on nuclear weapons. Indeed, Russia recently renounced its former policy of "no first strike" with nuclear arms.
US policies are making things worse. To some Russians, the proposed expansion of NATO to include Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states does not seem benign.
The US is continuing to try to build a scaled-down "star wars" missile defence system — in technical violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — which does not necessarily look benign in Russia.
Current US policies seem almost certain to make the world less stable and more dangerous.
[From Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Like Green Left Weekly,Rachel's is a non-profit publication which distributes information without charge on the internet and depends on the generosity of readers to survive. If you are able to help keep this valuable resource in existence, send your contribution to Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, Maryland 21403-7036, USA. In the United States, donations to ERF are tax deductible.]