BY NORM DIXON
The United States government and military is prepared to exploit the horror of the September 11 mass murders in order to win public acceptance for the use of nuclear weapons in the "war against terrorism" and "rogue states". A report to the US Congress by defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld has argued for the development of a "low-yield" nuclear weapon to destroy "hard and deeply buried targets".
The report, which was simply ignored by most of the big media outlets, was sent to key congressional committees in October. It argues that the US needs to develop a "bunker-buster" nuclear device because it is the best means of destroying underground stockpiles of chemical and biological agents.
"Low-yield" nuclear weapons are usually defined as having the explosive force of five kilotons of TNT or less; the US atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had a yield of 15 kilotons. A 1994 law prevents the US developing a nuclear warhead of less than five kilotons. The testing of such a weapon would be defined as an atmospheric nuclear test and would breach the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The report stated that US military scientists "have completed initial studies on how existing nuclear weapons can be modified to defeat those [deeply buried targets] that cannot be held at risk with conventional high-explosive weapons". A joint planning board has been established to study the use of nuclear "bunker busters".
The country that will be squarely in Washington's nuclear sights if the Pentagon gets its way is Iraq. The Bush administration has made it clear that it is keen to attack Iraq as the next stage in its "war on terrorism" using the justification that Iraq is developing "weapons of mass destruction" — biological and chemical weapons. Without a shred of evidence — and following years of stringent inspections — Washington insists that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein has stockpiled these weapons in underground bunkers.
Supporters of the nuclear "bunker-buster" missile claim that, after it is launched from a warplane or ship, it will be able to penetrate deep into the ground and, after a delay, the "weak" nuclear blast would be contained beneath the earth.
However, the Federation of American Scientists has pointed out that conventional ground-penetrating weapons have only ever achieved a depth of six metres. A nuclear blast at that level, the FAS warns, "will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area".
Robert Sherman, head of the FAS's nuclear security project, warned last April that "there is universal recognition that once you use the first nuclear weapon it becomes a great deal easier for someone to use the second. It's incredibly stupid to think you can use a small nuclear weapon, cross the nuclear firebreak and get away with it".
Related to this is the Bush administration's policy — contained in the classified Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) handed to Congress in early January and reported by the January 8 Washington Post — of ensuring the US can rapidly resume underground nuclear testing should the administration decide to do so.
Washington contends that testing may be necessary to maintain the "safety" and "reliability" of its arsenal. The NPR proposes that the time it takes to prepare for the resumption of tests be reduced from the current two years to less than one year.
President George Bush senior placed a moratorium on underground nuclear tests in 1992 and it was continued by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1999 the US refused to ratify the CTBT, a decision that Bush junior has praised.
US administration officials have linked the need to consider resumed nuclear testing to Bush's November announcement that the US would reduce its strategic warhead stockpile from 7000 currently to around 2000 within a decade. The option to resume testing must continue "particularly as the stockpile gets smaller", Richard Perle, chairperson of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, told the Washington Post.
However, according to the January 9 New York Times, the NPR does not advocate that the warheads "removed" from the stockpile be destroyed. This means they will simply be put into storage and be available for redeployment at short notice.
As Richard Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defence, told the January 9 New York Times: "We are putting more emphasis than we have in the last 10 or 15 years on that underlying infrastructure that allows you, including in the nuclear area, to rebuild capabilities or build new ones if the world changes."
The Bush administration's drive to upgrade its existing nuclear weapons and develop new ones — under the guise of a reduced nuclear arsenal — should not be seen in isolation its obsession with the "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile program. Washington has not abandoned its long-term objective of achieving the capability of launching a first-strike nuclear attack on an enemy without the possibility of retaliation.
Should the development of "low-yield" nukes become a reality, the day when the US uses an atomic weapon against a Third World government or national liberation movement comes frighteningly closer.
[The Pentagon's Hard and Deeply Buried Targets report to Congress and the response by the anti-nuclear weapons group Nuclear Watch is available at <http://www.nukewatch.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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