WASHINGTON: Critics of the Bush administration’s nuclear arms policies say this week’s closed-door meeting to discuss new weapons and an eventual resumption of nuclear testing could lead to a new arms race that would severely threaten world security.

“In my view, proposals for new nuclear weapons provide no military values for the United States and it would result in enormous political, diplomatic and proliferation costs,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based nongovernmental research organization.

“To pursue the development of new types of nuclear weapons would make the task to ban the spread of nuclear weapons even more difficult,” he told IPS on Wednesday.

“There is a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ philosophy implied. In order to develop and produce them, testing would be required that by itself would trigger a global reaction cycle that would harm international security. China might resume testing, or Russia.”

This week’s Strategic Command (STRATCOM) meeting in Omaha, Nebraska will involve some 150 people from weapons labs, the Energy, Defence and State departments, and the White House.

Since President George W. Bush last year announced plans to deploy a limited missile defence system at several sites in the United States, counter proliferation has moved centre-stage, experts say.

“The 2002 National Security Strategy is radical in its prescription for a preventive or pre-emptive use of force in halting NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons proliferation,” says a 112-page report by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), an advocacy group based in Washington.

That strategy to fight weapons of mass destruction (WMD) “is a dramatic extension of the policy of counter proliferation, and gives a far greater role than in the past to nuclear weapons within that strategy,” continues the report, ‘What Wrongs Our Arms May Do’, presented at a conference on Tuesday.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy (DOE) weapons labs have proposed developing low-yield nuclear earth-penetrating weapons (EPW), also referred to as nuclear bunker busters.

Critics oppose them, fearing their relative smallness will blur the line between conventional and nuclear war, posing a new threat to world security.

They also question if radioactive fallout can actually be contained.

“Constraints of physics stop bunker busters from being effective, as there are limits to how far the bomb can penetrate. In order to hit the deepest bunker — meaning 20 to 30 feet — it has to be a large bomb to send shockwaves to penetrate down,” said Martin Butcher, director of security programmes at PSR and author of the report.

“However, this will lead the fireball ... to disperse and radiate dust particles up into the atmosphere, creating a dirty bomb — the most dangerous weapon there is,” he told IPS.

“These questions just weren’t addressed by those who are in charge of the development of these weapons,” added Butcher.

In the FY2003 budget, Bush requested $15.5 million for research on bunker busters. The administration is spending almost $8 billion on missile defence this year, which will include equipping a California air force base with interceptor missiles.

Washington’s missile defence plans are also intricately linked to its pre-emptive war policies aimed at countering proliferation of (WMD), say critics.

While the administration argues that the missile defence system will increase protection against a missile attack, experts question that assumption.

“Missile defence will encourage the United States to pursue pre-emptive attacks, possibly with tactical nuclear weapons,” said Martha Clar, author of another PSR report, ‘A False Sense of Security: The Role of Missile Defences in Counter proliferation Doctrine’, at a conference on Tuesday.

“Missile Defence deployment will actually encourage proliferation as rogue states attempt to develop the number of weapons necessary to overwhelm a US missile defence,” she added.

Under current administration plans, new strategic nuclear forces will remain in the US arsenal until at least 2070, the 100th anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which the United States and other nuclear weapon states promised to disarm.

If the United States resumed new nuclear testing, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would be severely harmed, according to critics. —Dawn/The InterPress News Service.