New US nukes targeted at Third World
By David Muller
The US government is stepping up the technological and nuclear arms race against the Third World. In early April, six radar-evading B-2 "Stealth" bombers were officially commissioned into the US nuclear strike force with a new generation of penetrator nuclear bombs.
The weapons are the biggest enhancement of US nuclear capability since the Cold War's end. The Pentagon can now launch precision raids from its own soil against command bunkers in Iraq or the kind of chemical-weapons factory the US says Libya is building inside a mountain.
The 3.6 metre-long B61-11 drills deep into the earth before exploding in a blast whose shockwaves can crush targets hundreds of metres below, according to information from the Los Alamos Study Group and Greenpeace.
Those organisations charge that this new deployment is a dangerous attempt to expand the role of nuclear weapons to pre-emptive weapons for potential use against non-nuclear Third World countries.
The B61-11 is an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb that can be delivered by variety of US aircraft, including F-16 fighter planes, B-1 and B-2 bombers and possibly the B-52 bomber. As a low yield earth-penetrating "mininuke", it could provide the United States with a weapon that some say could be more realistically used than larger nuclear bombs in regional conflicts.
"This new nuclear capability makes it obvious that decision makers in the Clinton administration are expanding the post-Cold War role of nuclear weapons", said Greg Mello, director of Los Alamos Study Group. "You have to ask, who are the targets: the Russians? or Third-World countries?"
The earth-penetrating capability is intended for deeply buried targets such as command and control bunkers. Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April by suggesting that the earth-penetrating weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah.
This thinly veiled threat came just 11 days after the United States signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any other signatory, including Libya.