[Washington Post - 3/11/02] The Bush administration's nuclear posture review, which listed seven rogue nations as possible targets for U.S. nuclear weapons, follows a pattern set five years ago by a nuclear directive signed by then-President Bill Clinton.
The Clinton presidential decision directive, called PDD-60, reduced the number of U.S. nuclear weapons targeted for immediate launch on Russian conventional forces while adding several types of targets in China. PDD-60 was seen as preparing the groundwork for sharp reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons by declaring an end to the Reagan doctrine of fighting and winning a nuclear war.
The Clinton directive also introduced the post-Cold War concept of preparing targets in other countries, which it termed "adaptive planning," a former senior Pentagon official said. That same phrase is used in the Bush administration report.
Under that concept, contingency plans were drawn up during the Clinton administration to target countries other than Russia and China as had been done in earlier administrations, but this time to include "rogue" nations. Up-to-date intelligence was kept on weapons of mass destruction facilities in Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other "rogue" nations. Updates were continuously passed to nuclear target planners at the U.S. Strategic Command, this official said.
"There were no immediate plans on the shelf for target packages [for those countries] to give to bombers or missile crews, but we could produce targeting information for those countries within hours," the former official said.
He said visitors to the U.S. Strategic Command in the 1990s, who had the required security clearances, were shown the capabilities of adaptive planning. Classified charts displayed the chemical, biological or nuclear facilities in rogue nations that could be hit by nuclear weapons. In addition, the official said, "We could show even the distribution of the plumes of chemical or biological fallout after the attack took place."
"Nothing has changed," this official said, as far as he could tell from reading recent reports about classified sections of the Bush review, which was sent to Congress in early January. He noted that one author of the Clinton directive who worked on nuclear issues and PDD-60 in the Pentagon, Franklin Miller, today works in a senior position dealing with nuclear weapons as a staff member of President Bush's National Security Council.
Another former Pentagon official noted yesterday that contingency nuclear targeting of Iran dates to the hostage crisis of 1979, and that of Iraq to the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
In advance of Operation Desert Storm, then-President George H.W. Bush wrote to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein saying that any use of biological or chemical weapons against U.S. or coalition forces could result in "the strongest possible response," a phrase widely interpreted to imply nuclear retaliation.
The Clinton administration picked up that concept in 1996, when then-Defense Secretary William Perry said, "If some nation were to attack the United States with chemical weapons, then they would have to fear the consequences of a response from any weapon in our inventory. . . . We could make a devastating response without the use of nuclear weapons, but we would not forswear the possibility."
That idea also appeared in PDD-60 and is repeated in the Bush review.
Among other parallels between the Clinton directive and the recent Bush nuclear posture review is that nuclear weapons would remain the cornerstone of U.S. security for the foreseeable future. Bush's document, however, sets the need for such weapons out at least 50 years.
Clinton called for retention of the triad of land- and sea-based intercontinental missiles plus strategic bombers, while the Bush review calls for development of a new generation of these delivery systems: a new land-based ICBM by 2020, a new submarine-launched missile and submarine to launch it by 2030, and a new heavy bomber by 2040.
Some arms control specialists have criticized the Bush nuclear posture review for appearing to lower the threshold on the possible use of such weapons.
"What the nuclear posture review does is [it] details and confirms that the Bush administration is seeking to increase, not decrease, the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign and military policy," said Darryl Kimball, director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association.
In London yesterday, the first stop on a tour that will take him to the Middle East, Vice President Cheney dismissed the idea that the posture review indicated that Washington was preparing preemptive nuclear strikes on Iraq or other nations mentioned.
Cheney described the report as one required by Congress "on the overall state of our capabilities and [it] gives some idea of the directions we'd like to move in in the future." The vice president went on: "But the notion that I've seen reported in the press that somehow this means we are preparing preemptive nuclear strikes . . . I'd say that's a bit over the top."
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[posted 3/12/02]
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