The Bush Policy of Nuclear Proliferation

The Bush administration has its foreign policy hands full with each nation in its "Axis of Evil." From the unsuccessful search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to the appearance of negotiations with North Korea, and the push to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, President Bush is following through with his promise to make certain these "dangerous regimes and terrorists" can not threaten the U.S. with the world's most destructive weapons.

But he's going about it in a way that will actually increase the nuclear threat to the U.S. and the world.

Buried in the President's 2004 defense budget are two particularly troubling requests. The first seeks to repeal a 10-year-old ban on the development of smaller, lower-yield nuclear weapons, also known as mini-nukes. The second is a $15.5 million request to conduct research on a new bunker buster bomb called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The Senate voted 51 to 43 to lift the ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. Actual production of the weapons would require the President to obtain congressional authorization. The House is expected to vote on the measure this week.

Administration officials contend they are not seeking to build new nuclear weapons, but only studying and researching the options. Speaking at a press conference, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld added, "Many of the things you study, you never pursue." Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a supporter of the ban, replied, "Does anyone really believe that?"

The Bush administration's desire to develop a low-yield nuclear weapon stems from the theory that a cold war nuclear weapon is so massive and destructive the U.S. would never actually use one. The thinking goes, a smaller, 5-kiloton nuclear weapon--about a third the size of the nuclear bomb used in Hiroshima--would be more useful in deterring nations such as North Korea. But as Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) rightly noted, "We're moving away from more than five decades of efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons."

As for research into a new bunker-buster nuclear weapon, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a fact sheet outlining the "troubling science" behind the proposed weapons. The scientists note that even a small, low-yield earth-penetrating weapon will create radioactive debris, there is no guarantee that the nuclear blast would successfully destroy chemical or biological weapons, and there are current conventional weapons that could be used as alternatives.

The Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, released in January 2002, was a foreshadowing of a new nuclear era in which the once-termed "weapon of last resort" has turned into a usable, necessary tool in the anti-terror arsenal.

As part of the Nuclear Posture Review, the Pentagon expanded the nuclear hit list to include a wide range of potential adversaries, such as North Korea, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, whether or not those nations possess nuclear weapons. The circumstances under which the use of nuclear weapons might be considered has also expanded beyond situations threatening the national survival of the United States to include retaliation for a North Korean attack on South Korea, or simply as a response to "surprising military developments." The review also sanctions the first use of nuclear weapons to "dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends."

The Bush administration's nuclear doctrine represents an abrupt departure from the policies of prior administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. How likely are countries like Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, and China--all of which have been targeted in Bush's new nuclear plan--to heed the administration's calls to reduce or renounce their own nuclear arsenals in the face of this new threat from the United States?