By Steve Painter
Recent decisions have cut deeply into the nuclear arsenals of the USA and the former USSR, greatly reducing the potential scale of a nuclear war. But the nuclear threat is by no means a thing of the past. While the USA and the USSR have reduced the number of times they might destroy the earth's biosphere, they can still wipe it out more than the crucial first time.
Moreover, while the two main nuclear powers are reducing their arsenals, Britain and France are increasing theirs, and the nuclear weapons club is growing. To help justify continuing the infamous trade embargo against Iraq, western governments and media have made much of that country's primitive nuclear program, but other powers have already broken non-proliferation treaties or are poised right on the verge of doing so.
Though neither admits it, Israel and South Africa are already unofficial members of the traditional nuclear club of the USA, USSR, France, Britain and China. Pakistan and India have pushed their nuclear programs right to the point of a capacity to produce weapons, but are said not to have done so, yet. According to New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh in a new book, The Samson Option, Israel has advanced neutron bombs in its nuclear arsenal, and has established three nuclear-capable artillery battalions.
On top of this, by 1989, 39 states already possessed military missiles or had placed orders for them. This preceded the dramatic international increase in arms spending before, during, and especially since, the Gulf War. There is a real danger that some of these missiles might be nuclear-tipped in the near future as the chaotic political break-up and economic collapse of the Soviet Union increase the possibility that nuclear scientists from that region might put their skills on the international market.
What's more, if reports from early January in a leading Milan daily, Corriere della Sera, are true, the ever-enterprising, proto-capitalist black market in the former USSR might already be carrying out one of the more spectacular of its many dubious achievements. The Italian paper claims to have documentary evidence that nuclear weapons from the former Soviet arsenal have found their way into the international armaments marketplace at a price of around US$20 million each. While strategic nuclear weapons were located in only four republics of the former USSR, battlefield nukes were stored in all 15. Corriere della Serra also reports that Swiss and Italian police have seized weapons-grade uranium and plutonium said to have originated in the former USSR.
The break-up of the old Soviet conventional arsenal is also likely to cause problems. The Bonn-based Bild Zeitung recently reported that the Russian republic had sold Pakistan several thousand T-72 tanks from East Germany in return for food and other consumer goods.
Against these trends, a combination of domestic economic difficulties ational situation has led some countries to sign local agreements to give up their quest for nuclear weapons capacity. Argentina and Brazil recently signed such an agreement, as did South and North Korea. The latter eliminated one pretext for a Gulf-style US-UN strike against the North, which was discussed in the US media in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
While nuclear weapons remain a fundamental threat to civilisation, the recent cuts to the US and former Soviet arsenals do represent important steps back from the disastrous military build-up since the 1960s. In 1989, the USA and USSR commanded 98% of the world's military destructive capacity and supplied 70% of the international arms trade. All that figure reveals is the massive overcapacity of these states' killing machines, both before and after the recent cutbacks.
Britain and France also have large armaments industries and about 1000 nuclear weapons between them. China and Israel are each estimated to have about 300 nuclear weapons, and South Africa at least 25. Germany, while not a nuclear weapons power, also has a large armaments export industry. The minor nuclear powers alone probably have enough nuclear capacity to make our planet unlivable.
But if the minor nuclear powers' arsenals are alarmingly large, the US and former Soviet arsenals are coming down from enormous levels. In 1989 they had around 52,000 nuclear weapons between them. Cuts flowing mainly from the Gorbachev-Shevardnadze initiatives of the mid-'80s brought this down to around 25,000 at the present time.
The latest cuts, which are not all a result of the recent Yeltsin-Bush exchange, but were largely agreed on last September under Gorbachev's initiative, will bring it down to around 11,000 — still leaving the two arsenals many times the size of the rest of the nuclear weapons powers combined. While some former republics, most notably Belarus and the Ukraine, have declared their intention to rid themselves of nuclear weapons entirely, Yeltsin has said Russia should retain a small nuclear arsenal.
Yeltsin initiated the latest expansion of the cuts in late January with an offer to stop targeting non-military targets in the USA. This offer was extended to European powers, and particularly to Britain, a few days later. The initial offer preceded a visit by Yeltsin to the US and Europe, and probably reflected the fact that arms cuts are one of the few bargaining chips available to the Russian government in its pitch for more international aid. Yeltsin clearly took notice of US defence secretary Dick Cheney's statement to Mikhail Gorbachev last September that he had problems with the idea of lending money to a power that had nuclear missiles aimed at US cities.
If more aid was what Yeltsin was hoping for, he must have been disappointed, because Bush only promised to ask Congress for another $600 million aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States in addition to the $5 billion already promised. In comparison to the overall US budget, or even the defence budget of around $300 billion, this is a paltry amount.
But in any case, the cuts were compulsory for Yeltsin in view of Russia's economic collapse. Pursuing a seven-fold cut in Russian sin's government has plans to sack about 700,000 military personnel in addition to its dramatic cutbacks to missiles and other materiel.
Bush's cuts are also driven by economic considerations. Like other world empires before it, the USA's massive military spending has contributed heavily to its present economic problems. It presently spends around 16% of its budget on war, around US$800 per citizen per year, compared with a world average of US$160. It is now in a prolonged recession which has some commentators predicting a permanent slide to "second-rate" economic status, following in the footsteps of Britain.
The $50 billion cut over five years announced by Bush in his January 29 State of the Union message will free some funds for image-enhancing projects as presidential elections loom against a backdrop of recession and mass unemployment. Even so, the latest US spending cuts are far from dramatic: a marginal US$10 billion per year. The cuts last year were larger. Of course, the latest cuts amount to more than the entire Australian military budget ($9 billion), but it is a small proportion of the USA's total military outlay.
While the former Soviet cuts reflect a fundamental and apparently irreversible change of direction, the US cuts are purely tactical. They represent a rationalisation of US military power along lines recommended for some time by post-Cold War strategists and weapons scientists. With the demise of the Soviet Union, some big-ticket weapons systems have become obsolete, particularly intercontinental missiles such as the MX. The B-2 Stealth bomber is another casualty.
Strategists also point out that reductions in warhead numbers make multiple-warhead weapons less viable. A smaller number of weapons should be dispersed more widely on single-warhead missiles to reduce the proportion of the arsenal that could be knocked out in one hit. The shift to single-headed missiles also suits the type of conflict the US is expected to be involved in from now on: wars of the Desert Storm type against probably non-nuclear regional powers.
It seems the US change of direction will not mean an end to nuclear testing or development of new weapons. For some time, scientists have been saying research could proceed up to prototype stage, with factories standing by ready to go into production should the need arise — a version of the just-in-time system adopted in the motor vehicle and other mass production industries in the early '80s.
Items dropped or cut back by Bush include:
- the B-2 Stealth bomber, cut to 20 from the original projection of around 130.
- the giant MX multiple warhead, intercontinental missile, production to cease and existing stocks to be scrapped.
- Midgetman missiles, new warheads for sea-based nuclear missiles, and advanced Cruise missiles, further production or purchases cancelled.
- existing sea-launched missiles, to be cut back by one-third.
Some of these cuts have been in the wind since the last round of Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) last September. Since at least the oil price shocks of the 1970s and the USA's defeat in Vietnam, there have been two main prongs to US military policy: the nuclear arsenal targeted overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and other post-capitalist states, and rapid deployment forces capable of quick intervention and withdrawal anywhere in the world.
The latest cuts continue the US government's recent direction towards strengthening the rapid deployment strategy at the expense of the nuclear. While some nuclear capacity is to be maintained, it is unlikely to be of much practical use in the New World Order.
If the Gulf War is any guide, the US government can probably get away with short-term regional interventions without arousing unacceptable levels of protest at home. The use of nuclear weapons in such wars could change that, though the presence of an estimated 300 nuclear weapons in the Gulf at the time of the war indicates that the US government is probably willing to take that risk as well.
The USA's conventional forces have always been far more useful to the military than the nuclear arsenal, which still has been used only once in conflict — in Japan at the end of World War II. But even the conventional forces are undergoing rationalisation.
Last year, Bush announced cutbacks in the US army from 764,000 to 535,000, reducing the army to its smallest size in 50 years. He also announced the closure of more than a third of the USA's foreign military bases and a reduction of US forces in Europe by half, to 150,000. Some elements of the US political establishment think the cuts should go further. Democrats in the Congress have called for a reduction of the nuclear arsenal to 1000 (from around 5000 after the latest cuts), scrapping of the new Seawolf submarine, and the recall of all but 50,000 troops from Europe.
The Bush cuts are in line with moves to streamline the US forces for the regional conflicts it is likely to face in future. Even in the short Gulf War, some US personnel objected publicly and refused to go. Reductions in numbers will enable military authorities to recruit more selectively, weeding out those most likely to object to regional wars on political, ethnic or other grounds. The scrapping of bases signals a move from the old, imperial style of maintaining a physical presence to a greater reliance on quick transportation made possible by technological advances. There's to be greater emphasis on quick air and sea transportation, lighter equipment, pre-positioning of supplies and access agreements with US allies. The C-17 transport plane survived the latest cutbacks untouched.
The new emphasis is also evident from the areas that have not been cut back. Star Wars (the Strategic Defence Initiative) actually received increased funding in the latest US budget. It seems the Star Wars "Brilliant Pebbles" anti-missile system is being explored as an alternative to the Patriot, which failed miserably during the Gulf War, doing more damage on the ground in Israel than the incoming Scuds they were supposed to shoot down.
Satellite technology was enormously important to the quick defeat of Saddam Hussein's forces in the Gulf, and the Star Wars technology will strengthen this. Even more than in the Gulf War, massive air power, guided by satellite information, will be central to future US strategy.
In all this, while the nuclear establishment might be down, it's by no means out. It is adapting to the new situation by suggesting, among other things, a new look at neutron bombs and other weapons that kill people without damaging property. Just before the Gulf War, Newsweek reported that the use of neutron bombs was being considered in the Gulf.
The USA, with 6% of the world's population, today consumes 25% of its energy output and has already exhausted 80% of its known oil reserves. It is very likely that future wars will, like the Gulf War, be fought over resources, and particularly oilfields. Nuclear advocates argue that they could develop weapons that would get rid of any wrong-headed types controlling such resources without expensive damage to the resources themselves. (Those scanning the horizon for signs of the next major war might do well to keep their eyes on Libya, with its small population and its large reserves of high-grade oil).
While B-2 Stealth bomber production has been cut back to 20, those 20 are probably all the US forces need in the new situation. Operating from about three bases, this fleet could, with one refueling, bomb any point on the planet. To repeat the 1986 raid on Libya today, Bush would need only four B-2s and four refuelling planes, operated by eight fliers, instead of the 84 F-111s and other fighter craft and the 35 support craft, operated by 134 fliers, involved in the original raid.
Another area not mentioned in the latest cuts is chemical weapons. The US today admits to holding at least 1000 tons of VX gas and 1700 tons of mustard gas, more than Saddam Hussein was ever able to lay hands on, and the US budget for chemical and biological weapons doubled in 1990-91.
Meanwhile, some $35 billion of the US defence budget is allocated for secret "special access programs", more commonly known as the black budget. Even members of Congress seldom get to know about the content of these programs, but one that has leaked into the public arena is the Timberwind nuclear-powered rocket, which would replace the existing Minuteman ICBMs and would also violate accepted nuclear safety standards by operating in the atmosphere. Allocations to black budget research and development programs increased more than 16 times in the '80s, going from $626 million in 1981 to $10.27 billion in 1990.
All this means is that the world has not become a safer place with the demise of one of the nuclear superpowers. Nuclear arsenals have been dramatically reduced, but the likelihood of the remaining weapons being used may actually have increased. It's worth remembering that the USA threatened nuclear strikes against opponents on at least 12 occasions before the USSR achieved nuclear parity in the 1970s. After that, there were no more such threats.
Unfortunately, Dr Strangelove is still alive and kicking, and now he relative impunity, he is probably more dangerous than ever.