Foreign Policy In Focus

At Foreign Policy in Focus Stephen Zunes reports on a resolution (HR 568) that the House passed in a show of bipartisanship (401-11) that couldn't have come at a worse possible time (as is usually the case with bipartisanship these days). He explains that HR 568 calls for "the president to oppose any policy toward Iran 'that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.'"

… Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

Even Colin Powell, as quoted by Dennis Kucinich, "has stated that this resolution 'reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war.'"

First, the vote shows yet again that Democratic congress-persons would rather pander to their donors (in this case, lobbying groups such as AIPAC) rather than represent their constituents. Sure, talk tough on defense, especially with respect to Iran, plays well with most American voters. But many of those voters don't understand, as congress-persons do -- or would if the psyches of many of them weren't as compartmentalized as they are -- the extent to which such talk can pave the way to catastrophic war. Besides, though best left to legal scholars, HR 578 smells either illegal or unconstitutional.

What escapes most observers -- Professor Zunes conspicuously excepted -- is that as apocalyptic as war with Iran would be, the implications of HR 568 are even more sweeping. He writes:

The language of this resolution, however, significantly lowers the bar [for taking military action against Iran] by declaring it unacceptable for Iran simply to have "nuclear weapons capability" — not necessarily any actual weapons or an active nuclear weapons program. 

Nuclear weapons capability, which isn't technically illegal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is also known as "virtual deterrence," because the program has yet to become "bricks and mortar." One can't help but wish that the missiles and bombs with which we threaten Iran were also virtual and it were all a videogame.

More to the point, writes Professor Zunes:

There is enormous significance to the resolution’s insistence that containment, which has been the basis of U.S. defense policy for decades, should no longer be U.S. policy in dealing with potential threats. Although deterrence may have been an acceptable policy in response to the thousands of powerful Soviet nuclear weapons mounted on intercontinental ballistic missile systems aimed at the United States, the view today is that deterrence is somehow inadequate for dealing with a developing country capable of developing small and crude nuclear devices but lacking long-range delivery systems.

Indeed, this broad bipartisan consensus against deterrence marks the triumph of the neoconservative first-strike policy, once considered on the extreme fringes when first articulated in the 1980s.

According to this line of thinking, no need to rely on deterrence alone with non-nuclear weapon states: we're free to mount an offensive attack, as well. Meanwhile, with nuclear-weapons states, first strikes are almost entirely out of the question -- not only nuclear strikes, but conventional. Thus do states that aspire to nuclear weapons draw the inevitable conclusion that they need to develop a nuclear-weapons program to avoid offensive attacks and "qualify" to be handled with a deterrence policy by the United States.

In a similar vein, Martin Hellman, arguably the world's clearest quantifier of nuclear risk and proprietor of the site Defusing the Nuclear Threat, recently wrote:

The logical inconsistency – and danger – of nuclear deterrence should be obvious, but it still forms the foundation of our national security strategy. Yet, for nuclear deterrence to work:

• we must be irrational enough for our adversary's threats not to deter us, yet
• our adversary must be rational enough that our threats will deter them. 

As I commented at Defusing the Nuclear Threat in response:

I think I've got it: The rational us are supposed to act irrational in hopes the irrational them acts rational. Makes perfect sense!

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Western governments claim that satellite images show Iran is trying to scrub a site at its Parchin military complex clean of evidence of nuclear weapons experiments. In response, Gareth Porter wrote at IPS on June 8:

The nature of the [alleged evidence of activities] depicted in the images and the circumstances surrounding them suggest, however, that Iran made them to gain leverage in its negotiations with the IAEA rather than to hide past nuclear experiments. … the activities shown in those satellite images … appear to be aimed at prompting the IAEA, the United States and Israel to give greater urgency and importance to a request for an IAEA inspection visit to Parchin.

For example water shown in a satellite image and ostensibly used for cleaning "appears to collect in a ditch a short distance away from the building. … soil that was moved from two areas [but appears] to have been carried only a few hundred feet further north of the former area where it is shown to have been dumped, offering another inviting target for environmental sampling."

In other words, the so-called sanitizing is a show Iran has been putting on for the benefit of the West. Porter further reports that the Arms Control Association's Greg Thielmann told him "that he didn't know whether the changes shown in satellite images were part of a conscious Iranian negotiating strategy." But, the changes, in effect, "'increase the interest of the IAEA in an inspection at Parchin as soon as possible and to give Iran more leverage in the negotiations.'"

"Access to Parchin," Porter explains "has been recognised implicitly by both sides as Iran's primary leverage in those negotiations."

Gareth Porter is one of the few -- perhaps the lone -- analyst striking the note that, besides for nuclear power, Iran enriches uranium as a bargaining chip with the West. Arguably it's a less hostile strategy than the coercive diplomacy to which the United States reflexively defaults. 

With its attempts to lure the West in via its scrub-down show Iran seems to be playing negotiating chess while the West is playing checkers. But, as has been pointed out to me, in the end, it may be immaterial since the West can bring its first down on the whole game, crush the board and scatter the pieces.

Besides, Iran may be cutting it too close. For one thing, the worth of its chips is inflated: Both the West and its regional neighbors think Iran is developing a program that all the evidence suggests it isn't and over-react accordingly. Worse, Iran's strategy resembles Saddam Hussein's before the 2003 invasion. While neither Iran nor Iraq had nuclear weapons, both thought it was to their advantage to leave a seed of doubt in our minds, though for different reasons: Saddam for regional security, Iran as a negotiating ploy to get sanctions suspended and advance its nuclear energy program.

When it comes to nuclear weapons, nature couldn't abhor a void more. Imagination runs rampant and those with an agenda against the state holding its nuke cards close to the best feel justified in pursuing it to the max.

One can't help but experience something akin to gratification by a June 4 New York Times editorial on nuclear disarmament.

Did House Republicans somehow miss the end of the cold war? At a time when, for the sake of both security and fiscal responsibility, the country should be reducing its nuclear arsenal, the House has approved a defense authorization bill for 2013 that threatens to freeze the number of weapons at current levels and, over time, waste billions of dollars on unnecessary purchases and programs.

Thankfully, the bill isn’t likely to become law. But it is worth taking a closer look, both for what it says about Republicans’ misplaced strategic priorities — and about how far President Obama has already gone to appease them.

The A word -- yikes! The editorial writer also injects some sly sarcasm (emphasis added). 

The bill would bar reduction, consolidation or withdrawal of tactical weapons in Europe — we can’t imagine a more unnecessary weapon — unless several onerous conditions are met.. 

The writer also brings to light a point to which I personally hadn't been exposed (or it hadn't registered). As regular Focal Points readers know, a recurring theme here is the decoupling of nonproliferation from disarmament in recent years. In other words, Western nuclear powers seem to use the imperative to prevent non-nuclear weapon states, as well as terrorists, from obtaining nukes as a smokescreen. They seek to obscure -- or rationalize -- the leadership on disarmament that they're failing to demonstrate by signing anemic treaties such as New START and funding modernization programs intended to endow nuclear weapons into perpetuity.

Meanwhile, hawks and realists both maintain that disarmament leadership means nothing to states that aspire to nuclear weapons anyway. In the past, this author has suspected that, messengers aside, they may be right. But the Times editorial states:

If the United States fails to keep pushing for even deeper cuts — or raises any doubts about its current commitments — it will have an even harder time rallying global pressure to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran, North Korea and others. Remember George W. Bush’s contempt for treaties? 

In other words, failure to disarm may be immaterial to states whose nuclear programs are at the dream stage, but it does have an adverse effect on states we petition to join us in preventing proliferation. Thus disarmament in itself may or may not have a direct effect on proliferation, but it can be a force multiplier in the quest for nonproliferation.

In recent years, the annals of national security are replete with retired generals expressing second thoughts about how militarized the United States has become. The latest is Gen. (Ret.) James Cartwright, who chairs the Global Zero movement's U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission, which recently issued a report titled Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture. It's a radical departure from what you'd expect from a former chief of STRATCOM (the United States Strategic Command), which includes the U.S. nuclear-weapons arsenal.

At Foreign Policy, J. Peter Scoblic writes that "Cartwright is challenging the nuclear status quo in a way that few Washington elites with such credibility on the subject have dared to do." The report, Scoblic explains, argues that the United States could

… reduce the number of nuclear weapons it deploys by two-thirds and the number of warheads it keeps in reserve by nearly 90 percent. [This] would force the United States to step across a line that separates existing nuclear doctrine from one that it has done its damnedest to avoid for decades, shifting from "counterforce" [targeting the nuclear weapons of, for instance, Russia] toward "countervalue" [other targets, as Scoblic explains below].

By suggesting that the United States limit its deployable weapons to several hundred, he has explicitly chosen a number that would eliminate the U.S. ability to conduct a preemptive, decapitating strike against [Russia's] nuclear weapons and eliminate its ability to retaliate. … Instead, [the wepons'] greatest utility would shift primarily to destroying larger, softer targets -- economic hubs, military-industrial facilities, population centers, and the like -- in retaliation for an enemy strike. As Cartwright told me, this would represent a "significant departure from our existing posture." It's much closer to a "countervalue" strategy.

As Scoblic concedes, "Calls for lower numbers are not new, certainly not from groups dedicated to nuclear disarmament like the one Cartwright worked with -- and not even among former heads of Strategic Command."

He's referring to one of the most dramatic examples of a former general calling for the United States to reconsider arming itself to its teeth. In 1997, Gen. George Lee Butler  created an impact when he delivered a speech and presented a disarmament manifesto signed by 60 retired generals and admirals from nuclear states. Among other things, he said:

"We need to think more boldly in terms of immediate initiatives. … We need to move beyond the sort of lock step, numbers-driven, phase-down, years-at-a-time, arms-control reductions of the cold war.''

One of the few American generals to request the use of nuclear weapons after World War II was Douglas MacArthur while he was chief of the U.N. Command during the Korean War. Part of his rationale? As I posted recently: "Sweeten up my B-29 force."

It's not commonly known, but even MacArthur mellowed. After the Bay of Pigs, President John F. Kennedy met with MacArthur in a courtesy call that extended to the whole afternoon because of Kennedy's intrigue by what MacArthur had to say. Kenneth O'Donnell reported for Life Magazine in 1970:

MacArthur implored the president to avoid a U.S. military build-up in Vietnam, or any other part of the Asian mainland, because he felt that the domino theory was ridiculous in the nuclear age. MacArthur went on to point out that there were domestic problems -- the urban crisis, the ghettos, the economy -- that should have far more priority than Vietnam.

MacArthur regaled Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, with similar advice. In MacArthur: Volume III, Triumph and disaster, 1945-1964 by Doris Clayton James wrote:

President Lyndon Johnson (a Democrat) once visited the ailing Douglas MacArthur (a Republican) at his Waldorf Astoria Hotel Tower residence in New York. Johnson sought the advice of the old commander about the Vietnam War shortly before the general’s death in 1964. Specifically, the President asked MacArthur about the fast expanding Vietnam War and what the increasing US military presence should do.

MacArthur’s lecture was brief. He said the US should not get involved in any kind of war on the Asian mainland because it has no known boundaries. The old warrior specifically referred to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand as countries without fixed boundaries, but separated only by deep ravines, rivers, and rain forests.

Most retired generals who share the perspective they've gained on how militarized the United States has become are marginalized. But when someone of the stature of MacArthur speaks, it seems to at least give presidents pause. The equivalent today would be if current CIA head and full-time celebrity-general James Petraeus issued cautionary words about our national-security policy. Unfortunately, he neither gives any indication of fading away nor of backing down from his hawkish stances.

Today nuclear weapons are the cornerstone of the national-security policy of major powers, as defensive weapons under the guise of deterrence. In the past, nuclear weapons were used for offensive weapons, though "only" twice (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But among the other uses for which they were contemplated was one that was unusually novel.

The Korean War, wrote Paul Cummings for the History News Network in 2005, is "assumed to have been a limited war, but its prosecution bore a strong resemblance to the air war against Imperial Japan in the second world war, and was often directed by the same US military leaders." For instance

The air force dropped 625 tons of bombs over North Korea on 12 August, a tonnage that would have required a fleet of 250 B-17s in the second world war. By late August B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North.  Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B-29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm.

Early in the war, General Douglas MacArthur, leader of the United Nations command, anticipated Chinese intervention.

"I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb -- to strike a blocking blow -- which would require a six months' repair job. Sweeten up my B-29 force."

Nuclear weapons: not just a force multiplier, but a force sweetener. In any event, at the time, MacArthur's suggestion was shelved. But when Chinese troops later entered North Korea, President Truman threatened the use of nuclear weapons. Then

… MacArthur said he had a plan that would have won the war in 10 days: "I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria." Then he would have … "spread behind us -- from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea -- a belt of radioactive cobalt . . . it has an active life of between 60 and 120 years. For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North." He was certain that the Russians would have done nothing about this extreme strategy: "My plan was a cinch." 

MacArthur, wrote Cumings, "sounds like a warmongering lunatic"

… but he was not alone. Before the Sino-Korean offensive, a committee of the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] had said that atomic bombs might be the decisive factor in cutting off a Chinese advance into Korea; initially they could be useful in "a cordon sanitaire." … A few months later Congressman Albert Gore, Sr. … suggested "something cataclysmic" to end the war: a radiation belt dividing the Korean peninsula permanently into two."

If readers are able to unearth another example of plans to use nuclear bombs to irradiate a strip of land to act as a defense or buffer, kindly inform us. For now, it stands as the silliest use devised for nuclear weapons. Except of course for nuclear deterrence: the idea that possession of nuclear weapons can prevent nuclear war even for the foreseeable future.