By Ivan Oelrich and Hans M. Kristensen

Only one week before Barack Obama is expected to win the presidential election, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made one last pitch for the Bush administration’s nuclear policy during a speech Tuesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

What is the opposite of visionary?  Whatever, that’s the word that best describes Mr. Gates’s speech.  Had it been delivered in the mid-1990s it would not have sounded out of place. The theme was that the world is the way the world is and, not only is there little to be done about changing the world, our response pretty much has to be more of the same.

Granted, Gates’s job is to implement nuclear policy not change it but, at a time when Russia is rattling its nuclear sabers, China is modernizing its forces, some regional states either have already acquired or are pursuing nuclear weapons, and yet inspired visions of a world free of nuclear weapons are entering the political mainstream, we had hoped for some new ideas. Rather than articulating ways to turn things around, Gates’ core message seemed to be to “hedge” and hunker down for the long haul. And, while his arguments are clearer than most, this speech is yet another example of faulty logic and sloppy definitions justifying unjustifiable nuclear weapons.

They Do It So We Must Do It Too

Reductions cannot go on forever, Secretary Gates argues because there is still a mission for nuclear weapons. Using language from the Clinton Administration, he says we can reduce our arsenal but we must also “hedge” against unexpected threats. He said, “Rising and resurgent powers, rogue nations pursuing nuclear weapons, proliferation of international terrorism, all demand that we preserve this hedge. There is no way to ignore efforts by rogue states such as North Korea and Iran to develop and deploy nuclear weapons or Russian or Chinese strategic modernization programs.”

While the potential threats he lists are real and must be addressed, how do nuclear weapons address these threats? And even if there were some nuclear component to our responses, the nature of those responses would be so varied that lumping these threats together muddles the issue. A nuclear response to international terrorism? Even if, for example, al Qaeda used a nuclear weapon to attack an American city, what target would we strike back at with a nuclear weapon? The implicit argument of symmetry is unsustainable. Just as we don’t respond to roadside bombs with our own roadside bombs, nor would we respond to chemical attack with chemical weapons or biological attack with biological weapons. We might respond to nuclear attack with nuclear weapons but we should not allow this to be an unstated assumption. The reason rogue nations, let’s say Iran and North Korea, are developing nuclear weapons is not to counter our nuclear weapons but as a counter to our overwhelming conventional capability. They certainly are not making the mistake of implicitly assuming symmetry.

The near universal logical sleight of hand is to make some argument for nuclear weapons, let’s say we need them because North Korea has them, and then, when people nod in agreement that we need nuclear weapons, let slip in the assumption that this implies we need the nuclear arsenal the administration wants. Not so fast. If North Korea has one, perhaps we need two, but that does not mean we need two thousand.

It helps to clarify the typically foggy nuke-think if we remove Russia and China from the picture and ask whether the United States could justify anything near its currently planned nuclear arsenal only to deter and defeat rogue states and terrorists. Of course not. And perhaps we don’t need nuclear weapons for regional scenarios at all, given our overwhelming conventional capabilities. So those odds and ends are thrown into the pot just to scare, not to explain, and not because there is any well thought out strategy for how nuclear weapons are going to stop a terrorist attack on an American city, or why it be an appropriate response to a regional state that doesn’t have the capability to threaten the survival of the United States.

Russia is a very different case: Russian long-range nuclear forces are the only things in the world today that could destroy us as a nation and society, just as we could destroy them. While relations with Russia are not friendly, no conceivable difference between the United States and Russia justifies this mutual hostage relationship. This pointless threat to our very existence persists because of a failure of imagination typified by this speech. In this case, it is the nuclear weapons that are creating the threat, not protecting us from it.

That Ole Warhead Production Fever

Whatever the supposed justification of nuclear weapons, the primary purpose of the Secretary’s speech seemed to be to promote the Reliable Replacement Warhead or RRW but again, his argument rests on hidden (and unjustified) assumptions and, at times, misstatements of fact. The basic premise is that, without testing, we are slowly but certainly losing confidence in the reliability of our nuclear arsenal. He said, “With every adjustment, we move farther away from the original design that was successfully tested when the weapons was first fielded.”

We do? The implication is that we have no other choice, what we could do in 1990 we simply can’t reproduce today, like handing a modern-day native American a hunk of flint and asking him to chip out an arrowhead.  Why should this be?  With a budget of billions of dollars, we can’t duplicate parts that we could make twenty years ago?  We can spend billions on the National Ignition Facility to create the world’s most powerful laser but we can’t reproduce a 1980s O-ring? The problem the Secretary describes is certainly possible and something we have to be alert to but it isn’t inevitable; we can maintain weapons within design margins as long as we want and in the past—pre-RRW—that was precisely the plan. And parts of the weapon that are not the nuclear core of the bomb can be improved and modernized and tested as much as we want.

But Mr. Gates claims that we are slowly and helplessly drifting, “So the information on which we base our annual certification of the stockpile grows increasing dated and incomplete.” This implies the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) has failed. We believe the Secretary is wrong. Everyone we have talked to who is familiar with the enormous effort that has gone into the SSP says that our understanding of nuclear weapons today is substantially greater than it was the day after our last nuclear test. Our knowledge of the aging of nuclear warheads is increasing faster than the warheads are aging.  Early uncertainties and concerns about stability, for example, of the plutonium parts of the weapon have been resolved and the parts have been shown to be stable for many decades, if not a century or more. Our computer models are dramatically and significantly more detailed and sophisticated. In fact, one weapon designer has told us that, given a fixed budget, the best investment of your next dollar would never be in a nuclear test but in more inspections, more computer simulations, more replacement of non-nuclear components, more material tests, more frequent tritium replenishment, and so forth.

How Many Times Does Congress Have to Say No?

Every time the Pentagon has proposed a new nuclear warhead since the end of the Cold War, Congress has refused to fund it. Now that the RRW appears to have been whacked, what will the next proposal for a new warhead look like?

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Aside from the question of the reliability of current warheads, Mr. Gates argues that we still need an RRW because we need to modernize. The British, French, Russians, and Chinese are modernizing so we must too, obviously. Why? Nuclear weapons are a mature technology. There is no new science in nuclear weapons. They are powerful, efficient explosives. They are intended to blow up things and they have specific missions, which typically involve blowing up specific things.  If they can accomplish these missions, what is the problem? If the technology, even the weapons, is decades, even centuries old, if they work then they work. Nuclear weapons are not fighter planes or tanks or submarines, duking it out on a battlefield with the enemy’s opposite number, so our nuclear weapons should be evaluated with regard to the targets they are expected to destroy, not anyone else’s nuclear weapons. They can destroy the targets. We’re done.

The important factor is not the warhead but the delivery vehicle that is intended to bring the warhead to the target. And the reason the United States is not producing new nuclear weapons while Russia and China do is not because they can and we can’t, or they’re ahead and we’re behind, as the Secretary indicated. Rather, the United States has not been producing new nuclear weapons because it didn’t have to – the existing ones are more than adequate – and because not producing has been seen as much more important to U.S. foreign policy objectives. And if Russian and Chinese warhead production is a problem, why not propose how to influence them to change rather than advocating that we repeat their mistake?

The final argument for the RRW is that the US must maintain a nuclear production industry and the RRW is grist for that mill. But many of the RRW technologies and capabilities were developed by the very SSP that Gates now implies is failing. Six years ago – before they came up with RRW after having failed to get permission to build the Precision Low-Yield Weapon Design (PLYWD) and the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) – the National Nuclear Security Administration assured Congress: “We believe the life extension programs authorized by the Nuclear Weapons Council for the B61, W80, and the W76 will sufficiently exercise the design, production and certification capabilities of the weapons complex” (emphasis added). That assurance was given after the Foster Panel recommended, “developing new designs of robust, alternative warheads.” Now the claim suddenly is that the life extension programs do not sufficiently exercise the weapons complex. At least get the argument straight.

What’s Around the Corner?

We would be more sympathetic to the production argument if the fundamental minimal needs of the nuclear production industry were better thought out and justified, but what we see is an effort to maintain a slimmed down version of what we have without thinking through what we need. In fact, if maintaining the production industry is the core objective, we would have expected the administration to ask for an RRW design that doesn’t need a complex production industry, one that is extremely simple, perhaps using uranium rather than plutonium, perhaps a clunky design but one sure to work that does not require any sophisticated skills that must be maintained in standby in perpetuity.

We’re concerned that in the end Congress will accept a beefed-up life extension program – they seem to have already found a name for it: Advanced Certification Program – that will relax the restrictions for what modifications can be made to existing warheads in order to incorporate as much as the RRW concept as possible and add new capabilities if necessary. Unless the next president significantly changes the nuclear guidance for what the Pentagon is required to plan for, RRW-like proposals will likely continue to make it harder to create a national consensus on the future role of nuclear weapons. And Barack Obama has not explicitly rejected the RRW, but said he does “not support a premature decision to produce the RRW” and “will not authorize the development of new nuclear weapons and related capabilities.” Enhanced life-extended warheads could fit within such a policy.

In the end, justifying the nuclear weapons production industry is shaky because the justification for the weapons themselves is shaky, resting on assertion and Cold War momentum – as Gates’ speech illustrated – more than on rigorous assessments of missions and the security of the nation.

The Secretary’s speech was a disappointing missed opportunity.  We are a bit perplexed about why he gave it and gave it now. Perhaps he is putting down a marker for a debate he expects in the next administration and Congress. We welcome that debate because we believe that, with careful attention to definition and no hidden assumptions, the arguments for nuclear weapons fade away.

At a House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting 9 September 08 members of Congress discussed what the U.S. response should be to Russia’s aggressive actions in Georgia last month.  Most members of the Committee acknowledged that some sort of response was necessary to voice U.S. concerns about the possibility of a more aggressive Russian foreign policy, while they also conceded that the U.S. does need Russia’s cooperation on important matters of international security, such as helping to influence Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  An interesting debate is being hosted online on this topic by The Economist – click here to link to it.

In an earlier blog post, arguments were discussed from a 12 June 08 meeting of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for and against the signing of a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement (123 Agreement) with Russia. At the time, the most salient issues were our ability to influence Russia’s position vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the possibility that the 123 Agreement would restart domestic reprocessing, reversing 30 years of US policy. Since then, a full scale military operation has taken place between Russia and Georgia, a newly democratic ally of the U.S. who sent 2,000 troops to support U.S. efforts in Iraq. Now both Russian and American leaders want to remove the 123 Agreement from consideration for the time being, so as not to allow current events to color any debates about passing the legislation. Those in favor of the 123 Agreement believe that it would open up greater cooperation with Russia on issues such as pressuring Iran on its nuclear program. Whether this is true or not, if the 123 Agreement is now off the table because of Russia’s actions in Georgia, how much has this conflict damaged our ability to cooperate with Russia on nuclear arms control in the future? (more…)

On July 1, 1968 the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was opened for signature, codifying for the first time a legally binding obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament. This year marks the 40^th anniversary of this historic arms control treaty, to which every state in the United Nations except three has been a party (India, Pakistan, and Israel have never been signatories – North Korea withdrew from the Treaty in 2003).

Much has been written about whether the NPT regime is failing, in need of revision, or simply outdated. The NPT regime faces many challenges: nuclear weapons now enjoy a prominent place in the security policies of nuclear weapon states and new plans have been designed for their use including preemptive and preventive actions; materials and technology obtained from the civilian nuclear cooperation promoted by the Treaty could be used to manufacture nuclear bombs; a black market in nuclear technology and materials has been discovered; and the global rise in energy demand has put nuclear energy into the mix of solutions to this emerging crisis, despite the proliferation risks associated with advanced fuel cycle technology. Some voices counter that, with very few exceptions, the principles of the Treaty have prevented the widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons envisaged in the 1960’s by President Kennedy. One thing is clear: renewed commitment from the highest levels of government will be necessary to achieve the goals of the NPT and enable the processes and norms associated with the Treaty to peacefully navigate through the challenges it is facing and maintain its relevance for the future. (more…)

The nuclear base at Volkel is pixeled out on Google Earth (why, Google?). Click on image to download map of the base (note: 1 MB). Image: GoogleEarth (outline and label added)

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By Hans M. Kristensen

The Dutch Government today rejected the findings of the U.S. Air Force’s Blue Ribbon Review, saying the safety and security at the nuclear weapons base at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands “are in good order.”

The Blue Ribbon Review final report in February concluded that “most” nuclear sites in Europe do not meet U.S. safety requirements and that it would take “significant additional resources” to bring them up to standard. The disclosure of the findings has led to calls in some European countries that the remaining tactical nuclear weapons should be withdrawn.

During a meeting earlier today in the Defense Committee of the Dutch Parliament, Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop responded to a question from Krista van Velzen (Socialist Party) about the findings of the Blue Ribbon Review:

“Ms. van Velzen asked a question about the American report concerning the storage of nuclear weapons and Volkel. Insofar as this is relevant, safety and security at Volkel are in good order, but the government of the Netherlands does not make any announcements concerning the presence or absence of nuclear weapons embodying that single Dutch nuclear mission.” (unofficial translation)

Figure 1: Middelkoop-Gates Meeting 2007

Dutch Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop (left) met with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in October 2007. Afghanistan was on the agenda, but isn’t it time to talk about the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe?

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Although Mr. Middelkoop refused to confirm or deny whether there are nuclear bombs at the base, he did confirm that the Netherlands still has a nuclear mission. It would have been more interesting to hear his explanation for why that mission is still needed. The enemy is gone, the weapons would take “months” to ready for strike, and the U.S. Air Force would like to see the weapons withdrawn. The deployment increasingly looks like nuclear social welfare for a small group of NATO bureaucrats.

There are an estimated 10-20 U.S. B61 nuclear bombs stored at Volkel Air Base for delivery by Dutch F-16 fighter jets, part of an arsenal of approximately 200 nuclear bombs at six bases in five European countries.

Previous reports: USAF Report: “Most” Nuclear Sites in Europe do not Meet US Security Requirements (FAS, June 2008) | U.S. Nuclear Weapons Withdrawn From the United Kingdom (FAS, June 2008) | United States Removes Nuclear Weapons from German Base, Documents Indicate (FAS, July 2007) | U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe (NRDC, 2005)

On Thursday, June 12 the House Foreign Relations Committee met for over three hours and heard testimony from members of the Committee, a representative of the Bush administration, and expert witnesses regarding the pros and cons of supporting the Agreement Between the United States and Russia for Cooperation in the Field of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (Agreement) that President Bush submitted to Congress. As discussed in an earlier blog, the Agreement will have to sit before the Congress for 90 continuous days, and will pass unless Congress enacts a joint resolution of disapproval. Such legislation, H.J.Res 85, has already been submitted by Congressman Edward J. Markey (D – MA), a staunch opponent to nuclear power and thus to civilian nuclear cooperation agreements. The mood of those legislators at the hearing was generally one of skepticism, as members of Congress searched for reasons to support the Agreement. (more…)

Compared to all the excitement created by the US-Indian nuclear trade deal, the Russian equivalent, submitted last week, created barely a ripple [caution: big file to download]. While FAS strongly opposes the US-Indian nuclear trade agreement, the Russian case is much more complex.

There are reasons to oppose the Russian deal and reasons to support it. The calculation is further complicated because some of the reasons, in my opinion the primary reason, for opposing the deal are not because of specific problems with the deal, per se, but because the deal is a surrogate for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which is itself a breathtakingly bad idea.

(more…)

Iran continues to enrich uranium. Enrichment is the process that makes natural uranium useable in a nuclear reactor or, if carried further, a nuclear bomb. Iran claims that the motivation for its enrichment program is entirely peaceful but almost no one outside of Iran believes this. With the United States shouting from the sidelines, the Europeans are continuing the hard diplomatic work of persuading Iran to suspend its enrichment program, with little success.

The Iranians claim that they have just as much right as anyone to enrich uranium for their civilian nuclear reactors. This is not true but it is not entirely wrong. Part of the reason for on-going sanctions is that they lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for years. Iran could, in theory, make amends and satisfy the IAEA and then legally enrich uranium. Any country could. Enrichment, the process of preparing uranium for a nuclear reactor or, potentially, a nuclear weapon, is today a legitimate industrial enterprise. That is a problem.

The administration looks at the situation through the lens of an Iranian threat, but the problem is long-term, global, and fundamental. It is time to make a bold proposal that will apply to the Iranians but includes everyone else, even the United States. (more…)

It is impossible to entirely separate a civilian nuclear power program from a potential nuclear weapons program. President Bush knows this, which is why he is so concerned about Iran’s nuclear energy program. And this is why our country should not undercut nonproliferation goals by restarting a domestic reprocessing program, now called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). After putting the effort aside three decades ago, GNEP would reprocess plutonium from civilian nuclear power reactors. Reprocessing is dangerous — creating more fissile material that can be sabotaged or stolen by terrorists from storage or during transportation. But most importantly, a renewed U.S. reprocessing effort will set precisely the wrong example for the rest of the world. (more…)

The Federation of American Scientists was formed just a couple of months after the dawning of the nuclear age by scientists as who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapons. In the fall of 1945, there was tremendous interest in the new atomic bomb: what it was, how it worked, and its effects–and not just direct effects but the effect this invention would have on the military balance and politics of the world. FAS organized a group of its members, which it called the National Committee on Atomic Information, to talk to the public, the press, and political leaders, and to produce media materials for distribution. (Sixty two years later and we still seem to be at it…)

Jeff Aron here at FAS recently came across this amazing little film on YouTube called One World or None. It was produced by FAS and the National Committee. I have to admit, no one currently at FAS knew about it, it predates anyone’s memory here, and we are ourselves doing some research on its origins and asking our long-term members what they know. (If any of our blog readers can provide any information, please let us know.) Presumably, it was released in conjunction with the release of the first publication of the Federation, also called One World or None, a collection of essays by great scientists of the day, including Albert Einstein, that was first published in 1946. One World has recently been reprinted by the New Press in New York and is available through bookstores, Amazon, and the FAS website.

The film is clearly a bit dramatic, but the dangers of nuclear weapons are dramatic. By today’s standards, the graphics are Stone Age but the message is as important today as it ever was and doesn’t depend on fancy graphics. I can’t say you should enjoy this little film–not much to enjoy when discussing nuclear dangers–but I hope you take it to heart. The Federation is still working to reduce the global threat of nuclear weapons.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

Rumors about such options have existed for years, but the document is the first authoritative evidence that fear of weapons of mass destruction attacks from outside Russia and China caused the Bush administration to broaden U.S. nuclear targeting policy by ordering the military to prepare a series of new options for nuclear strikes against regional proliferators.

Responding to nuclear weapons planning guidance issued by the White House shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, U.S. Strategic Command created a series of scenario driven nuclear strike options against regional states. Illustrations in the document identify the states as North Korea and Libya as well as SCUD-equipped countries that appear to include Iran, Iraq (at the time), and Syria – the very countries mentioned in the NPR. The new strike options were incorporated into the strategic nuclear war plan that entered into effect on March 1, 2003.

The creation of the new strike options contradict statements by government officials who have insisted that the NPR did not change U.S. nuclear policy but decreased the role of nuclear weapons.

Non-Denial Denials and a Few Hints

When portions of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) were leaked in the Los Angeles Times in March 2002, government officials responded by playing down the importance of the document and its effect on nuclear planning. And officials have since continue to credit the NPR with reducing the reliance on nuclear weapons.

The NPR is “not a plan, it’s not an operational plan,” then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers insisted on CNN the day after the NPR was leaked. “It’s a policy document. And it simply states our deterrence posture, of which nuclear weapons are a part….And it’s been the policy of this country for a long time, as long as I’ve been a senior officer, that the president would always reserve the right up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if that was appropriate. So that continues to be the policy.”

A formal statement published by the Department of Defense added that the NPR “does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning,” but that the military simply “continues to plan for a broad range of contingencies and unforeseen threats to the United States and its allies.”

Most recently, on October 9, 2007, Christina Rocca, the U.S. permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament, told the First Committee of the U.N. General Assembly that the United States has been “reducing the…degree of reliance on [nuclear] weapons in national security strategies….It was precisely the new thinking embodied in the NPR that allowed for the historic reductions we are continuing today.”

Yet a few officials hinted in 2002 that the same guidance expanded nuclear planning. “There are nations out there developing weapons of mass destruction,” then Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “Prudent planners have to give some consideration as to the range of options the president should have available to him to deal with these kinds of threat,” he said.

The declassified U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) document shows that one of the first results of “the new thinking” of the NPR was the creation of a series of new nuclear strike options against regional states.

A Series of Regional Options

The 26-page declassified document, an excerpt from a 123-page STRATCOM briefing on the production of the 2003 strategic nuclear war plan known as OPLAN 8044 Revision 03, includes two slides that describe the planning against “regional states.” The first of these slides lists a “series of [deleted] options” directed against regional countries with weapons of mass destruction programs. The planning is “scenario driven,” according to the document. The majority of the document deals with targeting of Russia and China, but virtually all of those sections were withheld by the declassification officer.

The names of the “regional states” were also withheld, but three images used to illustrate the planning were released, and they leave little doubt who the regional states are: One of the images is the North Korean Taepo Dong 1 missile; another image shows the Libyan underground facility at Tarhuna; and the third image shows a SCUD B short-range ballistic missile. The SCUD B image is not country-specific, but the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center report Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat from 2003 listed 12 countries with SCUD B missiles: Belarus, Bulgaria, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Vietnam and Yemen. Five of these were listed in the NPR as examples of countries that were “immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies…setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities”: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria.

The inclusion of regional nuclear counterproliferaiton strike options into the national (strategic) war plan is a new development because such scenarios have normally been thought to reside at a lower level than the national strategic plan, which has traditionally been focused on targeting of Russia and China. During the 1990s, STRATCOM developed adaptive planning capabilities that enabled quick production of strikes against “rogue” states if necessary, but “there were no immediate plans on the shelf for target packages to give to bombers or missile crews,” a former senior Pentagon official told Washington Post in 2002. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 changed that by producing executable strike options to the nuclear forces.

The “target base” for the regional states is outlined in the STRATCOM document, but everything except the title has been withheld. But the target base probably included weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the states to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies. The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) that entered into effect one year after OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 stated in part: “U.S. nuclear forces must be capable of, and be seen to be capable of, destroying those critical war-making and war-supporting assets and capabilities that a potential enemy leadership values most and that it would rely on to achieve its own objectives in a post-war world.”

The creation of a “target base” indicates that the planning went further than simple retaliatory punishment with one or a few weapons, but envisioned actual nuclear warfighting intended to annihilate a wide range of facilities in order to deprive the states the ability to launch and fight with WMD. The new plan formally broadened strategic nuclear targeting from two adversaries (Russia and China) to a total of seven.

Iraq presumably disappeared from the war plan again after U.S. forces invaded the country in March 2003 – only three weeks after OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 went into effect – and discovered that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Libya presumably disappeared after December 2003, when President Muammar Gaddafi declared that he was giving up efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The nuclear strike plans against Iran, North Korea and Syria, however, presumably were carried forward into the next OPLAN 8044 Revision 05 from October 2004, a plan that was still in effect as recently as July 2007.

New Guidance for the Regions

The STRATCOM document indicates that National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-14 signed by President Bush on June 28, 2002, was the key While House guidance that resulted in the incorporation into the strategic nuclear war plan of strike options against regional proliferators.

Very little has been disclosed about NSPD-14, except that it laid out Presidential nuclear weapons planning guidance and provided broad overarching directions to the agencies and commands for nuclear weapon planning. As such, NSPD-14 might have been replacing Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-60 signed by President Clinton in November 1997 as the primary White House guidance for nuclear weapons planning. PDD-60 reportedly also required planning against proliferators, but the new strike options incorporated into Revision 03 were “notable changes” compared with the previous plan, according to the STRATCOM document.

Flowing from NSPD-14 were several other important guidance documents that deepened the commitment to targeting regional proliferators. The first was the JSCP Transitional Guidance in June 2002, which directed changes to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP). JSCP includes a nuclear annex or supplement, known as JSCP-N, that give detailed nuclear planning guidance to the unified and regional commanders. The new JSCP-N was published on October 1, 2002. Another document was the NUWEP (Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy) Transitional Guidance signed on August 29, 2002, which led to the publication of NUWEP-04 in April 2004.

Three months after NSPD-14, on September 14, 2002, President Bush also signed NSPD-17 (National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction), a directive that articulated a comprehensive strategy to counter nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. NSPD-17 reaffirmed that, if necessary, the United States will use nuclear weapons against anyone using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its forces abroad, and friends and allies, according to Washington Times. But a top-secret appendix to NSPD 17 specifically named Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya as being among the countries that are the central focus of the new strategy, and that options included nuclear weapons. Those options were in place with OPLAN 8044 Revision 03. The motivation for the new strategy, one participant in the interagency process that drafted it told Washington Post, was the conclusion that “traditional nonproliferation has failed, and now we’re going into active interdiction.” NSPD-17 is sometimes also called the preemption doctrine.

The regional strike plans also found their way into the draft Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (Joint Publication 3-12), which was under preparation within the military at the time Revision 03 was created. Yet the doctrine showed that planning went beyond retaliation and included preemptive strikes. The second draft from March 2005 listed five scenarios where use of nuclear weapons might be requested:

• To counter an adversary intending to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S., multinational, or allies forces or civilian populations;
• To counter an imminent attack from an adversary’s biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy;
• To attack on adversary installations including weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies; [this was probably the “target base” in OPLAN 8044 Revision 03]
• To counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces;
• To demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary WMD use.

After I disclosed this development in an article in Arms Control Today in September 2005 and the Washington Post followed up with a front-page story, sixteen members of Congress – including the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee – reacted by writing to the president to object to what they considered to be a “drastic shift in U.S. nuclear policy.”

Embarrassed by the exposure, the Pentagon canceled not only the draft doctrine (and four other related doctrine documents) but also the existing Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations document that had been publicly available on the Joint Chiefs of Staff web site for a decade. A Joint Staff official explained that the documents would not be published, revised or classified, explaining that that they had been found not to be real doctrine documents but “pseudo doctrine” documents discussing nuclear policy issues. The public “visibility led a lot of people to question why we have them,” he said.

From SIOP to OPLAN 8044: A “Family of Plans”

There is no indication that cancelation of the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations documents changed nuclear policy. The declassified STRATCOM document describes OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 as “a transitional step toward the new TRIAD and future war plans.” That transition began long before the “New Triad” phrase was coined by the 2001 NPR, and has gradually transformed the top-heavy self-standing Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) to a broader set of strike options applicable in a wider range of scenarios against more adversaries. When preparation of Revision 03 began in March 2002, the combat employment portion of the strategic nuclear war plan was still known as the SIOP, but the name had to be changed to reflect the emerging multitude of strike options.

As the Joint Staff started to review the new war plan, STRATCOM commander Admiral James Ellis wrote to General Myers that the name SIOP did not properly describe the new plan. “STRATCOM is changing the nation’s nuclear war plan from a single, large, integrated plan to a family of plans applicable in a wider range of scenarios,” Ellis explained with a reference to Revision 03. The first STRATCOM commander, General George Lee Butler, had tried to change the name in 1992, but with no luck. Butler wanted to change the name to National Strategic Response Plans. Eleven years later, Admiral Ellis tried again. The SIOP name, he said, was a Cold War legacy.

This time, the JCS chairman was more receptive. On February 8, 2003, only one month before Revision 03 went into effect, General Myers authorized STRATCOM to formally change the name to reflect the creation the “new family of plans.” Yet Myers was concerned that confusion might arise “between the basic USSTRATCOM OPLAN 8044 and the combat employment portion of that OPLAN, currently known as the SIOP.” The solution, he decided, was to continue to call the basic plan OPLAN 8044, but incorporate the term OPLAN 8044 Revision (FY) to describe that portion of the plan currently known as the SIOP. The Revision number (FY) would correspond to the fiscal year the combat employment plan was put into effect. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 of March 1, 2003, was the first plan to carry the new name.

The new strike options apparently were carried forward into OPLAN 8044 Revision 05, the next strategic war plan that entered into effect on October 1, 2004. This plan was described as a “major revamping” of the U.S. strategic war plan, which, according to General Myers, “provides more flexible options to assure allies, and dissuade, deter, and if necessary, defeat adversaries in a wider range of contingencies.” OPLAN 8044 Revision 05 was still in effect as of July 2007 (for a chronology of U.S. nuclear guidance and war plans under the Bush administration, go here).

Claims About Reducing Reliance On Nuclear Weapons

Officials frequently credit the NPR with having significantly reduced the reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. nuclear policy. The basis for this claim is that non-nuclear capabilities also should play a role in deterring potential adversaries, an goal exemplified by the incorporation of conventional strike options into OPLAN 8044 Revision 05, the war plan than followed OPLAN 8044 Revision 03, and the removal of Russia as an “immediate contingency.”

“The United States has set in motion an entirely new way of looking at the role of nuclear weapons in our defense strategy,” Jackie W. Sanders, U.S. Ambassador and Special Representative of the President for the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, told the 2005 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. “I speak, Mr. Chairman, of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, of 2001. The United States has undertaken reviews of this sort in the past, but the 2001 NPR is unique, and fully consistent with Article VI. The 2001 NPR established a New Triad of strategic capabilities, one that places far less reliance on nuclear weapons to meet U.S. defense policy goals…. Let me emphasize, Mr. Chairman, that the New Triad concept resulting from the NPR, in principle and in practice, will reduce reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. It reflects a totally new vision of the future, and is fully consistent with our indisputable resolve to implement Article VI.”

But while some conventional weapons are being incorporated into the national war plan and planning against Russia is not done in the same way it was during the Cold War, the NPR (building on the 1997 PDD-60) and White House guidance also resulted in an increased nuclear targeting of China and, as the declassified STRATCOM document illustrates, an geographic expansion of national-level nuclear targeting to regional proliferators. Prudent or not, this is not a development that is highlighted by U.S. diplomats at NPT conferences.

Description of Document

The declassified document is heavily redacted and consists of 26 of a total of 123 slides from the Revision 03 Periodic Update of the U.S. strategic war plan that went into effect on March 1, 2003. The plan was the first strategic war plan to carry the new name Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8044 Revision 03, which replaced the Single Operational Strategic Plan (SIOP) name used since 1960. OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 replaced SIOP-03 from October 1, 2002.

The document describes six parts of the new plan preparation: Revision 03 production status, planning guidance, target base, committed forces, options, and conclusions.

The document is not dated, but appears to be from October 2002, shortly before the Secretary of Defense was briefed. Targeting intelligence and selection had been completed, warheads allocated to the strike plans, and strike (sortie) planning for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), Sea-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), and long-range bombers nearly completed. After a Joint Staff review and production of the final Revision Report 03 in January 2003, final Defense Secretary review and approval by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were scheduled for late January 2003 before OPLAN 8044 Revision 03 went into effect on March 1, 2003.

Declassification of the document took four years. It was released in response to a FOIA request submitted in October 2003 for documents pursuant to remarks made by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing in July 2002. When asked if there had been a review of the SIOP since the mid-1990s, Myers replied: “Yes, there absolutely has. In fact, the secretary and I spent considerable time revising the SIOP. I think we started that last year and have gotten another major review ongoing.” The declassified document was released on October 10, 2007.

Resources: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Guidance | The Matrix of Deterrence | The Post Cold War SIOP and Nuclear Warfare Planning: A Glossary, Abbreviations, and Acronyms

Acknowledgements: This research has been made possible by support from the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ploughshares Fund.

A recent article, “Achieving Nuclear Balance”, in Nonproliferation Review, by Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, Chairwoman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, includes a sobering summary of the dangerous nuclear policies of the Bush administration, including its desire for new nuclear weapons and an expansion of the roles of nuclear weapons. Congresswoman Tauscher has been an important voice of reason in the nuclear debate and one of the primary forces behind efforts to force a fundamental review of the missions of nuclear weapons, to ask what nuclear weapons are for.

Nevertheless, her arguments in support of exploring the Reliable Replacement Warhead are mistaken and based on deeply rooted but ultimately unsupported assumptions. Her essay highlights the critical importance of carefully defining terms and avoiding being fooled by our own euphemisms.
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