Powell Rejects Reports U.S. Is Boosting Reliance on Nuclear Weapons
(He says nuclear threshold has not been lowered)
By Ralph Dannheisser
Washington File Congressional Correspondent
13 March 2002
Washington -- News reports that suggest a growing U.S. reliance on nuclear
weapons misinterpret the Defense Department's nuclear policy review,
Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate panel March 12.
Articles and editorials based on a leaked copy of the secret report "did not
comport with my understanding of the report," Powell said in testimony
before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the
State Department budget.
Indeed, Powell said, the United States policy is to continue reductions in
the number of nuclear weapons, President Bush remains committed to a
moratorium on testing, and there are no plans for a preemptive nuclear
strike on any other nation.
Powell's comments came in response to concerns expressed by Senator Jack
Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) over reports on the nuclear policy review that
first surfaced the previous weekend in the Los Angeles Times. Those reports
indicated that the possibility of a preemptive strike was at least under
discussion, and that contingency plans exist for using nuclear weapons
against at least seven countries: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea,
Libya and Syria.
"It seems to me," Reed told Powell, "that we are turning away from what was
our traditional approach to arms control, which was a very deliberate,
concerted, consistent effort to limit the use of nuclear weapons -- not to
expand their use."
Powell sought to reassure Reed that "the drive to reduce the number of
nuclear weapons has not changed -- it is accelerating, even in the absence
of traditional arms control kinds of negotiations."
As for reports that "somehow we are thinking of preemptively going after
somebody, or that ... we have lowered the nuclear threshold, we have done no
such thing," Powell declared.
In recent years, he said, the United States has moved "from a situation
where we had day-to-day alert targeting on specific targets all over the
Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact to a situation today where
not a single country in the world is on a day-to-day target list."
Given current realities, rushing into the use of nuclear weapons would make
no sense for the United States, the secretary suggested. "The discrepancy
in conventional capability between the United States and any other nation or
combination of nations is greater than it was 10 years ago" and an
overwhelming one, he said. "So we're no fools. We're not going to suddenly
say, 'Let's go more quickly to nuclear weapons,' when we have such
conventional capability."
The real meaning of the nuclear policy review, Powell maintained, is that
"the American president has to have all the options that are available to
him, alive and well, and thought through.
"And so when we look at the dangers that are out there, and we look at the
nations that might be developing weapons of mass destruction, it is prudent,
commonsensical, good thinking, politically and militarily ... to consider
what range of options the president should have," he argued.
Expanding on that point later, Powell acknowledged that "for those nations
that are developing these kinds of weapons of mass destruction, it does not
seem to us to be a bad thing for them to look out from their little
countries and their little capitals and see a United States that has a full
range of options, and an American president that has a full range of options
available to him to deter, in the first instance, and to defend the United
States of America, the American people, our way of life, and our friends and
allies."
Powell confirmed that "we are examining whether ... within our inventory (of
nuclear weapons) improvements can be made or there are new things that we
should be looking at." But, he assured the panel, "There is no new design
out there or new nuclear weapon about to be commissioned into production
that would require testing.
"We remain committed to a moratorium on testing. Even though we are not in
the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), the president remains committed to
a moratorium on testing,"
he added.
Asked by Senator Judd Gregg (Republican, New Hampshire) at another point in
the wide-ranging hearing where he sees "the light at the end of the tunnel"
in the war against terrorism, Powell responded that while "things are going
to get better," there will be continuing dangers.
"I don't think a day will ever come when somebody can come up to you and
say, 'Well, it's over. There's no longer a terrorist threat facing the
United States or its friends and allies, and we have gotten rid of every
last al-Qaida individual or cell in the world.' They will keep trying,"
Powell said.
But, he said, "we can reach a point where we can be less fearful of their
ability to strike at us" because of clear progress in "tearing up their
networks, understanding how they operate, going after them through
intelligence efforts, through law enforcement efforts, through
counter-intelligence efforts, through protecting our borders, through
homeland security activity, making it a lot harder for them to do their evil
work."
In an exchange with Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Republican, Colorado),
Powell lauded current levels of cooperation between the United States and
Russia that, he said, would have been unthinkable two years ago.
"People said the Russians will not let you do things in Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. But, quite the contrary, they are
cooperating with us because it is a common enemy -- not the U.S. versus
Russia -- it's the U.S. and Russia working against terrorism,
fundamentalism, smuggling, drug running -- all those things that are a
greater threat to Russia than they are to us," he said.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information
Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
Sources