Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: RRW

  • Another Perspective on the RRW “Victory”

    It was recently reported that funding for the so-called “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW) had been zeroed out in the FY 2008 budget passsed by the U.S. Congress. I quickly wrote this two-part response to the announcement of the RRW “victory” (see, for example http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=3065&issue_id=2), in response to an inquiry from a young colleague. I wrote the second part after reading the Summary and Explanatory Statement that accompany the joint House-Senate omnibus appropriations bill, the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act. I offer it as an alternative and distinctly “outside the beltway” point of view.

    Part I: Here’s my basic perspective. This *may* be an important symbolic victory – time will tell, especially following the rejection of the RNEP. It seems to signal that Congress is uncomfortable with the idea of funding *new* nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, it is a *very* small thing. Over the years since the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapon types specifically named in budget line items have been zeroed out several times, reappearing under different names or buried in more vaguely identified budget categories. ALSO, remember that there is an officially acknowledged *black budget* about which we know nothing. And, bear in mind that even with a few million cut from RRW, the overall nuclear weapons R&D budget is enormous, and still higher than during the average Cold War years. MOST IMPORTANTLY, zeroing out the RRW this year doesn’t fundamentally change *anything* about U.S. nuclear weapons policy, posture, readiness, capability, threat or lethality. Here are a few examples:

    • The Stockpile Life Extension Program is going forward. Last I checked the Labs were working on the W-76 warhead, giving it an enhanced ground burst capability, which would improve its first strike capability. “Life extensions” are planned for other warhead models. This begs the question of what “new” means, when talking about a nuclear warhead.
    • Despite the claim made by the U.S. representative to the First Committee of the United Nations in October, that U.S. nuclear weapons are not now and have *never* been on “hair trigger” alert, they do, in fact, remain on high alert status and have taken on an even more central role in U.S. “Global Strike” planning, which has as much or more to do with the delivery systems than the warheads. (See Hans Kristenson’s rebuttal at http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/kristensen-rebuttal_oct07.pdf) According to Bruce Blair’s rebuttal: “Both the United States and Russia today maintain about one-third of their total strategic arsenals on launch-ready alert. Hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads the equivalent of about 100,000 Hiroshima bombs — can be launched within a very few minutes. The end of the Cold War did not lead the United States and Russia to significantly change their nuclear strategies or the way they operate their nuclear forces.” (See http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm.)
    • The U.S. is on the only nuclear weapon state that deploys nuclear weapons on foreign territory. It is reliably estimated that 350 U.S. B-61 nuclear bombs are deployed at the following NATO bases in Europe: Aviano, Italy (50); Ghedi, Italy (40); Peer, Belgium (20); Uden, The Netherlands (20); Vulkaneiffel, Germany (20); Incirlik, Turkey (90); Lakenheath, UK (110) (Source: The Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/nato.htm.)
    • In response to an Op-ed signed by 8 European mayors who want the U.S. nukes removed from their territories, the NATO Chief announced that there are no plans to change NATO’s nuclear policy. (The Op-ed is posted at: http://www.2020visioncampaign.org/pages/319. The article about NATO’s response is at: http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1325579/NAVO+houdt+vast+aan+kernwapens.html.)
    • Almost nobody talks about the delivery systems or the long planning horizons *always* in place for nuclear weapons systems. Consider the following: “Advisers to U.S. Strategic Command this month urged the Defense Department to begin research and development soon for a new nuclear-weapons submarine, according to the Navy…. The review anticipated that a new program would have to begin around 2016 for the first submarine to be fielded in 2029. However, defense sources have told GSN that it now appears initial funding would be sought by 2010.” (See http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2007_11_29.html – 05F6F768. Note the reliance on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, widely dismissed by the arms control community at the time as a mere “wish list.”)
    • The details are in the fine print. With everyone continuing to sing the praises of Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn for their call for a “nuclear weapon free world,” Kissinger and Shultz have endorsed Sidney Drell’s position that “research work on new RRW designs should certainly go ahead.” (See http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2007_11_15.html – C8DB7944.) The history of military research and development strongly suggests that research and development efforts are not necessarily limited to specific weapon designs, and that even if a particular design in terminated, R&D may very well lead to new weapons concepts or modifications. It’s not over till its over.
    • The draft EIS for “Complex Transformation” (formerly Complex 2030) is expected in early January. I predict with a high degree of confidence that it will not include a plan for closing down the nuclear weapons infrastructure because the RRW isn’t currently funded. So what are they planning to spend that $150 billion on over the next 25 years?
    • The RRW vote not withstanding, the United States is not in any way shape or form acting in good faith with regard to its NPT Article VI obligation to negotiate “in good faith” the end of the arms race “at an early date” and “nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.” Here I offer two resources. One is the statement I made on behalf of the NGOs to the First Committee of the UN in October. (http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/statements/26octcabasso.pdf.) The second is a debate between U.S. diplomat and lawyer Christopher Ford and John Burroughs of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, on what Article VI of the NPT legally requires of states. (http://cns.miis.edu/cns/activity/071129_nprbriefing/index.htm)
    • Finally, as I wrote in a paper presented at a recent international conference on the challenge of abolishing nuclear weapons: The Encarta Encyclopedia describes militarism as “advocacy of an ever-stronger military as a primary goal of society, even at the cost of other social priorities and liberties.” And it relates militarism to chauvinism, fascism, and national socialism. As uncomfortable as it may be for many, this chilling definition accurately describes the historical trajectory and current reality of U.S. national security policy. The threatened first use of nuclear weapons remains at the heart of that policy. While it’s important to celebrate small “victories,” we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
    • Much more detailed analysis is included in our book, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis and Paths to Peace, available at http://www.wmdreport.org/.

    Part II: It is not at all certain that this outcome is the result of efforts by anti-nuclear activists. There are a couple of Congressmembers, Hobson and Visclosky, who didn’t like the RRW from the beginning, for reasons of their own. I believe it would be intellectually dishonest to proclaim this a major victory. After I wrote my initial response, I read the summary and explanatory statement that accompany the joint House-Senate omnibus appropriations bill, the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act. I found no surprises. According to the official summary, the nuclear weapons budget is the same as FY 2007 and the RRW isn’t even gone, it’s just on hold. (http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/EnergyandWaterOmnibus.pdf) Excerpt:

    “Weapons Programs: $6.3 billion, the same as 2007 and $214 million below the President’s request.

    • Reliable Replacement Warhead: Prohibits the development of a reliable replacement warhead until the President develops a strategic nuclear weapons plan to guide transformation and downsizing of the stockpile and nuclear weapons complex.”

    The explanatory statement, starting at p. 44 (PDF p. 88) provides a detailed breakdown of the funded nuclear weapons activities, including further description of the RRW and a *new* science campaign called “Advanced Certification,” and goes on to talk about the Stockpile Life Extension Program. Under “Warhead Dismantlement” you will find funding for the Device *Assembly* Facility at the Nevada Test Site, for “additional missions.” Read on to discover funding for the “enhanced test readiness program,” Inertial Confinement Fusion including the National Ignition Facility at the Livermore Lab and the Z machine at Sandia, Advanced Simulation and Computing, *including academic partnerships*, and pit manufacturing and certification. And it goes on. (http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/omni/jes/jesdivc.pdf)

    To sum up, from my perspective, one small line item was cut, the FY 2007 funding level was maintained, and the deck chairs were rearranged on the Titanic. I believe that it is imperative to broaden our approach, and to educate ourselves and the public about the profound historical and economic underpinnings of the military-industrial-academic complex. Imagine a scenario in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people around the country were calling unambiguously for the abolition of nuclear weapons *and war* and *demanding* meaningful leadership from the United States. What kind of political space might be opened up, and what kind of results might one expect? Certainly not less than eliminating 3 letters (RRW) from the NNSA’s vocabulary. We might actually get *more* and in the process begin to generate a real national debate on the *purpose* of and therefore the future of nuclear weapons, and the requirements for genuine human and ecological security.

    Jackie Cabasso is Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation (www.wslfweb.org)

  • Foiled Again: The Defeat of the Latest Bush Administration Plan for New Nuclear Weapons

    Originally published on History News Network (www.hnn.us)

     

    Advocates of a U.S. nuclear weapons buildup received a significant setback on December 16, when Congressional negotiators agreed on an omnibus spending bill that omitted funding for development of a new nuclear weapon championed by the Bush administration: the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Coming on the heels of Congressional action in recent years that stymied administration schemes for the nuclear “bunker buster” and the “mini-nuke,” it was the third–and perhaps final–defeat of George W. Bush and his hawkish allies in their attempt to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

    The administration’s case for building the RRW–a newly-designed hydrogen bomb–pivoted around the contention that the current U.S. nuclear stockpile is deteriorating and needs to be replaced by new weaponry.

    But studies by scientific experts revealed that this stockpile would remain reliable for at least another fifty years. In addition, critics of the RRW scheme pointed to the fact that building new nuclear weapons violates the U.S. commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue nuclear disarmament and that such a violation would encourage other nations to flout their NPT commitments.

    Naturally, peace and disarmament organizations were among the fiercest opponents of the RRW, arguing that it was both unnecessary and provocative. Groups like the Council for a Livable World, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Peace Action, and Physicians for Social Responsibility published critiques of the administration plan, mobilized their members against it, and lobbied in Congress to secure its defeat. Activists staged anti-RRW demonstrations and, despite the nation’s focus on the war in Iraq, managed to draw headlines with protests at the University of California and elsewhere.

    Members of Congress also were skeptical of the value of the RRW, particularly its utility in safeguarding U.S. security in today’s world, where the Soviet Union–once the major nuclear competitor to the United States–no longer exists. “Moving forward on a new nuclear weapon is not something this nation should do without great consideration,” noted U.S. Representative Peter Visclosky (D-IN), chair of the House subcommittee handling nuclear weapons appropriations. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of terrorism, the U.S. government needed “a revised stockpile plan to guide the transformation and downsizing of the [nuclear weapons] complex . . . to reflect the new realities of the world.”

    But is the defeat of the RRW a momentous victory for nuclear disarmers? After all, the U.S. government still possesses some 10,000 nuclear weapons, with thousands of them on launch-ready alert. Moreover, the Bush administration is promoting a plan to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Called Complex 2030 and intended to provide for U.S. nuclear arsenals well into the future, this administration scheme is supposed to cost $150 billion, although the Government Accountability Office maintains that this figure is a significant underestimate.

    Also, the RRW development plan might be revived in the future. Brooding over the Congressional decision to block funding for the new nuclear weapon, U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM)—a keen supporter of the venture–remarked hopefully that he expected the RRW or something like it to re-emerge “sooner rather than later.”

    This situation, of course, falls short of the 1968 pledge by the United States and other nuclear powers, under article VI of the NPT, “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to . . . nuclear disarmament.” It falls even farther short of their subsequent pledge, made at the NPT review conference of 2000, to “an unequivocal undertaking . . . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    Thus, this December’s Congressional decision to zero out funding for the RRW is only a small, symbolic step in the direction of honoring U.S. commitments and fostering nuclear sanity. If the United States and other nations are serious about confronting the menace of nuclear annihilation that has hung over the planet since 1945, it will require not only the scrapping of plans for new nuclear weapons, but the abolition of the 27,000 nuclear weapons that already exist in government arsenals, ready to destroy the world. Until that action occurs, we will continue to default on past promises and to live on the brink of catastrophe.

    Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His most recent book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).

  • Protest Against the Reliable Replacement Warhead

    Although Congress has been dealing with the Bush administration’s proposal to develop the reliable replacement warhead (RRW) for much of 2007, it’s remarkable that the new weapon, a hydrogen bomb, has attracted little public protest or even public attention.

    After all, for years opinion polls have reported that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor nuclear disarmament. A July 2007 poll by the Simons Foundation of Canada found that 82.3 percent of Americans backed either the total elimination or a reduction of nuclear weapons in the world. Only 3 percent favored developing new nuclear weapons.

    And yet, RRW is a new nuclear warhead, the first in two decades, and – if the Bush administration is successful in obtaining the necessary authorization from Congress – it will be used widely to upgrade the current U.S. nuclear arsenal. In this fashion, RRW won’t only contradict the U.S. government’s pledge under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward nuclear disarmament, it will actually encourage other nations to jump right back into the nuclear arms race.

    Of course, peace and disarmament groups – including Peace Action, the Council for a Livable World, and Physicians for Social Responsibility – have sharply criticized RRW in mailings to their supporters and on their websites. Public protests have taken place, including hunger strikes and other demonstrations at the University of California in May 2007 and a demonstration at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in August 2007.

    But these protests have been small. And the general public hasn’t noticed RRW. Why?

    A key reason is that peace groups and the public are preoccupied by the Iraq War and by the looming war with Iran. The actual use of weapons is always more riveting (and certainly more destructive) than their potential use. And weapons are being employed every day in Iraq, while nuclear weapons represent merely a potential danger – albeit a far deadlier one. Thus, in certain ways, the nuclear disarmament campaign faces a situation much like that during the Vietnam War, when the vast carnage in that conflict distracted activists and the public from the ongoing nuclear menace.

    Another reason is that it’s hard to involve the public in a one-weapon campaign. To rouse people from their lethargy, they need to sense a crucial turning point. When atmospheric nuclear testing and the development of the hydrogen bomb riveted public attention on the danger of wholesale nuclear annihilation in the late 1950s, or when the Reagan administration escalated the nuclear arms race and threatened nuclear war in the early 1980s, people felt they had come to a crossroads. By contrast, RRW appears rather arcane and perhaps best left to the policy wonks.

    Finally, the mass communications media have done a good deal to distort and/or bury nuclear issues since the end of the Cold War. Yes, at the behest of the Bush administration they trumpeted the supreme dangers of Iraqi nuclear weapons, even when those weapons didn’t exist. But they did a terrible job of educating the U.S. public about nuclear realities. A 1999 Gallup poll taken a week after the U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty found that, although most Americans favored the treaty, only 26 percent were aware that it had been defeated! Similarly, a 2004 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that the average American thought that the U.S. nuclear stockpile, which then numbered more than 10,000 weapons, consisted of only 200. Given the very limited knowledge that Americans have of the elementary facts about nuclear issues, it’s hardly surprising that relatively few are busy protesting against the development of RRW.

     

    Lawrence S. Wittner is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council and is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany.

  • Bush’s Latest Nuclear Gambit

    In 2005, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, recognizing that the Bush administration’s favorite new nuclear weapon–the “Bunker Buster”–was on the road to defeat in Congress, told its leading antagonist, U.S. Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio): “You may win this year, but we’ll be back.”

    And, now, like malaria or perhaps merely a bad cold, they are.

    The Bush administration’s latest nuclear brainchild is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). According to an April 6, 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times (Ralph Vartabedian, “U.S. Rolls Out Nuclear Plan”), the RRW, originally depicted as an item that would update existing nuclear weapons and ensure their reliability, “now includes the potential for new bomb designs. Weapons labs currently are engaged in design competition.”

    Moreover, as the Times story reported, the RRW was part of a much larger Bush administration plan, announced the previous day, “for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation’s system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.” The plan called for a modern U.S. nuclear complex that would design a new nuclear bomb and have it ready within four years, as well as accelerate the production of plutonium “pits,” the triggers for the explosion of H-bombs.

    Although administration officials justify the RRW by claiming that it will guarantee the reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and reduce the need for nuclear testing, arms control and disarmament advocates are quite critical of these claims. Citing studies by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, they argue that U.S. nuclear weapons will be reliable for decades longer than U.S. officials contend. Furthermore, according to Hoover Institution fellow Sidney Drell and former U.S. Ambassador James Goodby: “It takes an extraordinary flight of imagination to postulate a modern new arsenal composed of such untested designs that would be more reliable, safe and effective than the current U.S. arsenal based on more than 1,000 tests since 1945.” Thus, if new nuclear weapons were built, they would lead inevitably to the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing and, thereby, to the collapse of the moratorium on nuclear testing by the major nuclear powers and to the final destruction of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    Most worrisome for nuclear critics, however, is the prospect that the administration will use the RRW program to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, remains convinced that the replacement process initiated by the RRW program could serve as a back door to such development. Peace Action, the nation’s largest peace and disarmament organization, maintains that “the weapons labs and the Department of Defense will be the ones to decide the real scope” of the RRW program.

    Even Representative Hobson, who seems to favor the RRW, appears worried that the administration has a dangerously expansive vision of it. “This is not an opportunity to run off and develop a whole bunch of new capabilities and new weapons,” he has declared. “This is a way to redo the weapons capability that we have and maybe make them more reliable.” Hobson added: “I don’t want any misunderstandings . . . and sometimes within the [Energy] department, people hear only what they want to hear. . . . We’re not going out and expanding a whole new world of nuclear weapons.”

    Certainly, some degree of skepticism about the scope of the program seems justified when one examines the Bush administration’s overall nuclear policy. Today, despite the U.S. government’s commitment, under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, to divest itself of nuclear weapons through negotiated nuclear disarmament, the U.S. nuclear stockpile stands at nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads, with more than half of them active or operational.

    Not only does the Bush administration steer clear of any negotiations that might entail U.S. nuclear disarmament, but it has pulled out of the ABM treaty and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (negotiated and signed by former President Bill Clinton). According to the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review Report of February 2006, “a robust nuclear deterrent . . . remains a keystone of U.S. national power.”

    Furthermore, there are clear signs that the Bush administration is shifting away from the traditional U.S. strategy of nuclear deterrence to a strategy of nuclear use. The nuclear Bunker Buster, for example, was not designed to deter aggression, but to destroy underground military targets. Moreover, in recent years, the U.S. Strategic Command has added new missions to its war plans, including the use of U.S. nuclear weapons for pre-emptive military action. Seymour Hersh’s much-cited article in the New Yorker on preparations for a U.S. military attack upon Iran indicates that there has already been substantial discussion of employing U.S. nuclear weapons in that capacity.

    This movement by the Bush administration toward a nuclear buildup and nuclear war highlights the double standard it uses in its growing confrontation with Iran, a country whose nuclear enrichment program is in accordance with its NPT commitments. Of course, Iran might use such nuclear enrichment to develop nuclear weapons–and that would be a violation of the NPT. But Bush administration policies already violate U.S. commitments under the treaty, and this fact appears of far less concern to Washington officialdom. Logic, however, does not seem to apply to this issue–unless, of course, it is the logic of world power

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).