New US nuclear doctrine targets Iran, North Korea

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New US nuclear doctrine targets Iran, North Korea
By Patrick Martin
8 April 2010

The new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) issued by the Pentagon Tuesday is
being hailed by the Obama administration’s apologists as a step
towards global nuclear disarmament. It is nothing of the kind.

The document lays out a rationale that would justify the use of
nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state for the first time since
the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iran and North Korea
are singled out as potential targets.

The 72-page document was issued the day before Obama set off on a trip
to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, where he will sign a
nuclear weapons treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on
Thursday. Like the NPR, the new treaty is being billed by the White
House as an effort to reduce global stockpiles of nuclear weapons and
make their use less likely. This too is a political smokescreen, aimed
at disguising the growing danger of war.

Many details of the US-Russia treaty remain unclear, but the consensus
of arms control professionals is that the reductions are largely
cosmetic, and actually smaller proportionally than the last such
agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in 2002. The US and
Russia will reduce the number of deployed nuclear-capable missiles and
bombers to 700 each, a reduction of about 100 to 200 apiece. The
definitions are so loose, however, that the actual number of warheads
available for use will remain virtually the same.

The NPR document was issued by Obama’s secretary of defense, Robert
Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration and a CIA hardliner
throughout the last two decades of the Cold War. This alone should
rebut claims that the new nuclear doctrine is a step towards
disarmament, let alone pacifism. It was Gates who declared, less than
two years ago, that Washington needed to reserve the right of first
use of nuclear weapons in the event of chemical and biological attacks
on targets in the United States or allied powers.

The document rejects calls for declaring that the “sole purpose” of
possessing nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others—otherwise
described as a pledge of “no first use”—leaving open the possibility
that nuclear weapons could be utilized in an American military
operation that begins as a conventional war, like the Gulf War of
1990-1991 or the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House also backed off on Obama’s promise, during the
presidential campaign, to remove US nuclear weapons from a
“hair-trigger alert,” under which they can be launched at a moment’s
notice against targets in Russia. The military brass reportedly
objected to such a move, and there will be no significant change on
the alert status of the huge US nuclear arsenal.

The major change in the new document is to shift the immediate focus
of US nuclear weapons planning from Russia and China, the main targets
throughout the Cold War, to what the Bush administration called “rogue
states” and the Obama administration designates “outliers”—those
countries that are the most likely targets of US military action.

The new Pentagon doctrine bars authorizing a nuclear strike against a
non-nuclear country that uses chemical or biological weapons, but this
pledge is only for show, since the US reserves the right to change the
policy in the event of significant advances in biological weapons
capability in the future.

More significant is that the “ban” specifically excludes countries
designated as not in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). The US officially considers North Korea and Iran as not
in compliance, although Iran has not been so designated by the UN
agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that enforces the
treaty. North Korea withdrew from the NPT before carrying out its
first successful nuclear weapons test in 2006.

Gates made the targeting of these two countries explicit, telling a
Pentagon press conference: “There is a message for Iran and North
Korea here…if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going
to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of
how we deal with you.”

In two other areas of nuclear strategy, the Obama administration
largely continues the policies of George W. Bush, albeit with a great
deal of unwarranted posturing about peace and disarmament, of the kind
that was rewarded with last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The Pentagon claimed that the United States would no longer build new
nuclear weapons. “No new testing, no new warheads,” said Marine Gen.
James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
principal commander of US nuclear strike forces. But as the Los
Angeles Times noted, “officials said later that the policy could allow
them to bring back older, tested warhead components and designs to
build what would be, for all practical purposes, a new weapon.”

The Obama administration budget includes $5 billion for the Department
of Energy to carry out what Gates called “a credible modernization
plan necessary to sustain the nuclear infrastructure and support our
nation’s deterrent.” There are also billions set aside for advanced
radars and sensors to make non-nuclear missile strikes more accurate
and effective.

The NPR also makes missile defense systems a major strategic
objective. The administration rebuffed Russian demands to include
missile defense in the nuclear weapons treaty that Obama and Medvedev
will sign Thursday. Speaking Tuesday in Moscow, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia could withdraw from the
treaty if it felt that its strategic nuclear forces were threatened by
advances in US missile defenses.

The release of the nuclear weapons doctrine produced predictable
fulminations about appeasement and disarmament from prominent
Republican politicians. Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York and
presidential candidate, told National Review Online, “A nuclear-free
world has been a 60-year dream of the left, just like socialized
health care. This new policy, like Obama’s government-run health
program, is a big step in that direction.”

The comparison is apt, although not for the reasons given by Giuliani.
Like health care “reform,” the Obama nuclear weapons doctrine is an
effort to shift government policy to the right while using reformist
phraseology. Health care restructuring will cut overall spending on
medical services for the American people, just as the nuclear
“reduction” means increased spending on the military and a greater
likelihood that nuclear weapons will actually be used in war.

Republican senators John McCain and Jon Kyl issued a joint statement
demanding that the Obama administration “take no option off the table”
in its nuclear weapons policy. It is unclear whether Senate
Republicans will seek to block the new US-Russia treaty, which
requires a 67-vote majority in the Senate for ratification.

Former Bush officials, however, emphasized the continuity of policy
between the two administrations. Gates, of course, had the final say
over the nuclear doctrine, along with top military officers like the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, another
Bush appointee.

Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs under
Bush, welcomed the new policy and its “very tough line” on Iran.
“Renegade states like Iran and North Korea…are truly disruptive and a
threat to the world,” he said. “It seems to me that this new nuclear
policy review by the Obama administration strengthens the ability to
the United States to counter that threat and safeguard American
interests.”

The Wall Street Journal, a rabid opponent of the Obama administration
in most spheres, published a news article on the nuclear weapons
doctrine declaring that it represented “only modest changes to US
nuclear forces, leaving intact the longstanding US threat to use
nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear nations.”

In an interview with the New York Times Monday, Obama escalated his
demands on Iran, declaring it was not just that the US government
opposed Iranian possession of nuclear weapons, but that Iran should
not become a “nuclear-capable state.”

“I think that the international community has a strong sense of what
it means to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes
versus a weaponizing capability,” he said. “And a weaponizing
capability is obviously significant as we evaluate whether or not Iran
or any other country is serious about these issues.”

Since a “capability” refers mainly to the possession of critical
technological and scientific knowledge, eliminating such a capability
would require the destruction of the advanced engineering
infrastructure that Iran has developed over many decades.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/nucl-a08.shtml

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