Apocalypse Soon

Apocalypse Soon
By Robert S. McNamara
May/June 2005
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2829

Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we've come. His counsel
helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the
Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no
longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is
immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.

It is time—well past time, in my view—for the United States to cease
its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy
tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would
characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal,
militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an
accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far
from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that
it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of
its military power—a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the
international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons
and fissile materials for 50 years. Much of the current U.S. nuclear
policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and
it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the
intervening years.

Today, the United States has deployed approximately 4,500 strategic,
offensive nuclear warheads. Russia has roughly 3,800. The strategic
forces of Britain, France, and China are considerably smaller, with
200–400 nuclear weapons in each state's arsenal. The new nuclear
states of Pakistan and India have fewer than 100 weapons each. North
Korea now claims to have developed nuclear weapons, and U.S.
intelligence agencies estimate that Pyongyang has enough fissile
material for 2–8 bombs.

How destructive are these weapons? The average U.S. warhead has a
destructive power 20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Of the 8,000
active or operational U.S. warheads, 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert,
ready to be launched on 15 minutes' warning. How are these weapons to
be used? The United States has never endorsed the policy of "no first
use," not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been
and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons—by the
decision of one person, the president—against either a nuclear or
nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so.
For decades, U.S. nuclear forces have been sufficiently strong to
absorb a first strike and then inflict "unacceptable" damage on an
opponent. This has been and (so long as we face a nuclear-armed,
potential adversary) must continue to be the foundation of our nuclear
deterrent.
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In my time as secretary of defense, the commander of the U.S.
Strategic Air Command (SAC) carried with him a secure telephone, no
matter where he went, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a
year. The telephone of the commander, whose headquarters were in
Omaha, Nebraska, was linked to the underground command post of the
North American Defense Command, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, in
Colorado, and to the U.S. president, wherever he happened to be. The
president always had at hand nuclear release codes in the so-called
football, a briefcase carried for the president at all times by a U.S.
military officer.

The SAC commander's orders were to answer the telephone by no later
than the end of the third ring. If it rang, and he was informed that a
nuclear attack of enemy ballistic missiles appeared to be under way,
he was allowed 2 to 3 minutes to decide whether the warning was valid
(over the years, the United States has received many false warnings),
and if so, how the United States should respond. He was then given
approximately 10 minutes to determine what to recommend, to locate and
advise the president, permit the president to discuss the situation
with two or three close advisors (presumably the secretary of defense
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and to receive the
president's decision and pass it immediately, along with the codes, to
the launch sites. The president essentially had two options: He could
decide to ride out the attack and defer until later any decision to
launch a retaliatory strike. Or, he could order an immediate
retaliatory strike, from a menu of options, thereby launching U.S.
weapons that were targeted on the opponent's military-industrial
assets. Our opponents in Moscow presumably had and have similar
arrangements.

The whole situation seems so bizarre as to be beyond belief. On any
given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to
make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most
devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of
congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes'
deliberation by the president and his advisors. But that is what we
have lived with for 40 years. With very few changes, this system
remains largely intact, including the "football," the president's
constant companion.

I was able to change some of these dangerous policies and procedures.
My colleagues and I started arms control talks; we installed
safeguards to reduce the risk of unauthorized launches; we added
options to the nuclear war plans so that the president did not have to
choose between an all-or-nothing response, and we eliminated the
vulnerable and provocative nuclear missiles in Turkey. I wish I had
done more, but we were in the midst of the Cold War, and our options
were limited.

The United States and our NATO allies faced a strong Soviet and Warsaw
Pact conventional threat. Many of the allies (and some in Washington
as well) felt strongly that preserving the U.S. option of launching a
first strike was necessary for the sake of keeping the Soviets at bay.
What is shocking is that today, more than a decade after the end of
the Cold War, the basic U.S. nuclear policy is unchanged. It has not
adapted to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plans and procedures have
not been revised to make the United States or other countries less
likely to push the button. At a minimum, we should remove all
strategic nuclear weapons from "hair-trigger" alert, as others have
recommended, including Gen. George Lee Butler, the last commander of
SAC. That simple change would greatly reduce the risk of an accidental
nuclear launch. It would also signal to other states that the United
States is taking steps to end its reliance on nuclear weapons.

We pledged to work in good faith toward the eventual elimination of
nuclear arsenals when we negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) in 1968. In May, diplomats from more than 180 nations are
meeting in New York City to review the NPT and assess whether members
are living up to the agreement. The United States is focused, for
understandable reasons, on persuading North Korea to rejoin the treaty
and on negotiating deeper constraints on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Those states must be convinced to keep the promises they made when
they originally signed the NPT—that they would not build nuclear
weapons in return for access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But
the attention of many nations, including some potential new nuclear
weapons states, is also on the United States. Keeping such large
numbers of weapons, and maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are
potent signs that the United States is not seriously working toward
the elimination of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to
why any other state should restrain its nuclear ambitions.
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A Preview of the Apocalypse
The destructive power of nuclear weapons is well known, but given the
United States' continued reliance on them, it's worth remembering the
danger they present. A 2000 report by the International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War describes the likely effects of a single
1 megaton weapon—dozens of which are contained in the Russian and U.S.
inventories. At ground zero, the explosion creates a crater 300 feet
deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. Within one second, the atmosphere
itself ignites into a fireball more than a half-mile in diameter. The
surface of the fireball radiates nearly three times the light and heat
of a comparable area of the surface of the sun, extinguishing in
seconds all life below and radiating outward at the speed of light,
causing instantaneous severe burns to people within one to three
miles. A blast wave of compressed air reaches a distance of three
miles in about 12 seconds, flattening factories and commercial
buildings. Debris carried by winds of 250 mph inflicts lethal injuries
throughout the area. At least 50 percent of people in the area die
immediately, prior to any injuries from radiation or the developing
firestorm.

Of course, our knowledge of these effects is not entirely
hypothetical. Nuclear weapons, with roughly one seventieth of the
power of the 1 megaton bomb just described, were twice used by the
United States in August 1945. One atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima. Around 80,000 people died immediately; approximately
200,000 died eventually. Later, a similar size bomb was dropped on
Nagasaki. On Nov. 7, 1995, the mayor of Nagasaki recalled his memory
of the attack in testimony to the International Court of Justice:

Nagasaki became a city of death where not even the sound of
insects could be heard. After a while, countless men, women and
children began to gather for a drink of water at the banks of nearby
Urakami River, their hair and clothing scorched and their burnt skin
hanging off in sheets like rags. Begging for help they died one after
another in the water or in heaps on the banks.… Four months after the
atomic bombing, 74,000 people were dead, and 75,000 had suffered
injuries, that is, two-thirds of the city population had fallen victim
to this calamity that came upon Nagasaki like a preview of the Apocalypse.

Why did so many civilians have to die? Because the civilians, who made
up nearly 100 percent of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were
unfortunately "co-located" with Japanese military and industrial
targets. Their annihilation, though not the objective of those
dropping the bombs, was an inevitable result of the choice of those
targets. It is worth noting that during the Cold War, the United
States reportedly had dozens of nuclear warheads targeted on Moscow
alone, because it contained so many military targets and so much
"industrial capacity."

Presumably, the Soviets similarly targeted many U.S. cities. The
statement that our nuclear weapons do not target populations per se
was and remains totally misleading in the sense that the so-called
collateral damage of large nuclear strikes would include tens of
millions of innocent civilian dead.

This in a nutshell is what nuclear weapons do: They indiscriminately
blast, burn, and irradiate with a speed and finality that are almost
incomprehensible. This is exactly what countries like the United
States and Russia, with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert,
continue to threaten every minute of every day in this new 21st century.

No Way To Win
I have worked on issues relating to U.S. and NATO nuclear strategy and
war plans for more than 40 years. During that time, I have never seen
a piece of paper that outlined a plan for the United States or NATO to
initiate the use of nuclear weapons with any benefit for the United
States or NATO. I have made this statement in front of audiences,
including NATO defense ministers and senior military leaders, many
times. No one has ever refuted it. To launch weapons against a
nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a
nonnuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant,
and politically indefensible.

I reached these conclusions very soon after becoming secretary of
defense. Although I believe Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
Johnson shared my view, it was impossible for any of us to make such
statements publicly because they were totally contrary to established
NATO policy. After leaving the Defense Department, I became president
of the World Bank. During my 13-year tenure, from 1968 to 1981, I was
prohibited, as an employee of an international institution, from
commenting publicly on issues of U.S. national security. After my
retirement from the bank, I began to reflect on how I, with seven
years' experience as secretary of defense, might contribute to an
understanding of the issues with which I began my public service career.

At that time, much was being said and written regarding how the United
States could, and why it should, be able to fight and win a nuclear
war with the Soviets. This view implied, of course, that nuclear
weapons did have military utility; that they could be used in battle
with ultimate gain to whoever had the largest force or used them with
the greatest acumen. Having studied these views, I decided to go
public with some information that I knew would be controversial, but
that I felt was needed to inject reality into these increasingly
unreal discussions about the military utility of nuclear weapons. In
articles and speeches, I criticized the fundamentally flawed
assumption that nuclear weapons could be used in some limited way.
There is no way to effectively contain a nuclear strike—to keep it
from inflicting enormous destruction on civilian life and property,
and there is no guarantee against unlimited escalation once the first
nuclear strike occurs. We cannot avoid the serious and unacceptable
risk of nuclear war until we recognize these facts and base our
military plans and policies upon this recognition. I hold these views
even more strongly today than I did when I first spoke out against the
nuclear dangers our policies were creating. I know from direct
experience that U.S. nuclear policy today creates unacceptable risks
to other nations and to our own.
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What Castro Taught Us
Among the costs of maintaining nuclear weapons is the risk—to me an
unacceptable risk—of use of the weapons either by accident or as a
result of misjudgment or miscalculation in times of crisis. The Cuban
Missile Crisis demonstrated that the United States and the Soviet
Union—and indeed the rest of the world—came within a hair's breadth of
nuclear disaster in October 1962.

Indeed, according to former Soviet military leaders, at the height of
the crisis, Soviet forces in Cuba possessed 162 nuclear warheads,
including at least 90 tactical warheads. At about the same time, Cuban
President Fidel Castro asked the Soviet ambassador to Cuba to send a
cable to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stating that Castro urged
him to counter a U.S. attack with a nuclear response. Clearly, there
was a high risk that in the face of a U.S. attack, which many in the
U.S. government were prepared to recommend to President Kennedy, the
Soviet forces in Cuba would have decided to use their nuclear weapons
rather than lose them. Only a few years ago did we learn that the four
Soviet submarines trailing the U.S. Naval vessels near Cuba each
carried torpedoes with nuclear warheads. Each of the sub commanders
had the authority to launch his torpedoes. The situation was even more
frightening because, as the lead commander recounted to me, the subs
were out of communication with their Soviet bases, and they continued
their patrols for four days after Khrushchev announced the withdrawal
of the missiles from Cuba.

Good faith participation in international negotiation on nuclear
disarmament—including participation in the CTBT—is a legal and
political obligation of all parties to the NPT that entered into force
in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. The Bush
administration's nuclear program, alongside its refusal to ratify the
CTBT, will be viewed, with reason, by many nations as equivalent to a
U.S. break from the treaty. It says to the nonnuclear weapons nations,
"We, with t