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WASHINGTON: A new Pentagon policy review is sowing confusion about America’s intentions for the world’s most lethal nuclear arsenal.
On the one hand, President George W. Bush has declared his intention to slash the US nuclear stockpile.
But the secret Pentagon nuclear posture review, as reported over the weekend, has raised the possibility of developing new types of nuclear weapons and described contingency plans for using them against at least seven countries.
Senior US officials tried to play down news media reports about the review as nothing revolutionary, just prudent planning on the part of Pentagon strategists.
“I think there’s less than meets the eye and less than meets the headline with respect to the story,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told a television interviewer.
“We’re always reviewing our options, military options, on conventional weapons, nuclear weapons. We’re always reviewing our diplomatic, economic and political options,” he said.
But national security adviser Condoleezza Rice defended the Pentagon’s plans, saying the Bush administration “wants to send a very strong signal to anyone who might try to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States.”
“The only way to deter such a use is to be clear it would be met with a devastating response,” she said.
EXPERTS CONCERNED: This attempt at diplomatic damage-control has not stifled debate over what to many experts appears to be significantly shifting US attitudes about the circumstances under which nuclear weapons might be used.
“What the nuclear posture review does is details and confirms that the Bush administration is seeking to increase, not decrease, the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign and military policy,” said Darryl Kimball, director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association.
Since then, America has worked to discourage nations from developing and using nuclear weapons.
John Isaacs of the Coalition for a Liveable World said the Pentagon review takes US policy “in the other direction, with the administration trying to find ways to make nuclear weapons useful and find ways in which we might actually use them.”
Critics fear the perceived new US approach would erode even further the diplomatic pressures on countries like Iran and Iraq not to develop a nuclear capability.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday and The New York Times on Sunday, the Pentagon has been told to draft contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against at least seven countries — Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.—Reuters
