9/18/00 11:00 a.m.
Nuclear Insecurity
Bush should strike decisively at the fatally flawed, Clinton-Gore nuclear policy.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy,
was responsible for nuclear weapons policy in the Reagan Defense Department

n Friday, just as Governor George W. Bush announced his intention to focus increasingly on his differences with Vice President Al Gore on the issues, the Veep offered him a much-needed opportunity to go on the offensive on a substantive matter of enormous importance. According to the New York Times, in a meeting with the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mr. Gore announced that, if elected, "he would make [Senate] passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT] his first foreign policy initiative in Congress."

The Veep's decision to make the CTBT his first order of foreign policy business offers the Bush-Cheney campaign an extraordinary opportunity to do good substantively while doing well politically — provided it responds appropriately.

After all, this accord was last year deemed by no fewer than 54 Senators — 19 more than are needed to reject a treaty — to be so fatally flawed that it was unacceptable.

The magnitude of the CTBT's deficiencies were such that even the Senate's most influential proponent of arms control accords, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, felt obliged to oppose this treaty. The Bush campaign could do worse in responding to Gore than to cite the shortcomings Senator Lugar identified in explaining his opposition to the CTBT.

In an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune shortly after the Treaty was defeated, he wrote:

The CTBT presented to the Senate by the President lacks teeth. It has serious deficiencies, both in its basic concept and in its envisioned implementation....We have no evidence that any nation serious about developing nuclear weapons will be dissuaded by this treaty....

But ratifying this treaty would have tangible costs for our security. The U.S. nuclear arsenal provides a deterrent that is crucial to the safety of Americans and is relied upon as a security umbrella by most countries around the world. Without testing, the safety and reliability of the stockpile will degrade unless an effective alternative to testing is established.

Stewards of Disaster
Unfortunately, we are even farther from having "an effective alternative to testing" today than we were a year ago. In the interval, a key element of the Clinton-Gore Administration's so-called "Stockpile Stewardship Program" (SSP) has come a cropper.  The SSP was a transparent bid to buy off the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories — which had long, and properly, opposed the sort of "zero-yield," permanent ban on underground testing codified in the CTBT — with promises that huge infusions of funds would come their way to build an array of exotic experimental facilities, if only the labs fell into line.

A hallmark "promise" centered on the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) — a system that has in recent months been plagued by substantial technical, construction and cost problems. Today, it is anyone's guess how many more years and how many hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to bring NIF on-line — or, indeed, whether the funds needed to bring it to fruition will actually be forthcoming.  Worse yet, there is no guarantee that, even if NIF is built and works that it will obviate the need for further nuclear testing.

It speaks volumes about Gore that, in the face of these and other seeming show-stoppers, he would insist that the United States nonetheless press forward with the ratification of a defective Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  (Truth be told, the Administration has already begun preparations to implement this accord — at the cost of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours — notwithstanding the Senate's refusal to provide its advice and consent.) In particular, it lays bare the Veep's personal commitment to and association with a program the administration has called "denuclearization," arguably one the most pernicious aspects of its ominous national security legacy.

Last May, the denuclearization strategy saw the Clinton-Gore team giving U.S. support to U.N.-drafted language endorsing an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament." It also pledged to work for "The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear weapon states in the process leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons."

Now, clearly, there are many among Vice President Gore's electoral base who fancy the idea of the United States giving up all of its nuclear weapons. (In fact, quite a few of them have a long record of wanting America to do so unilaterally.) But there is still too much native common sense among the electorate as a whole for a majority to support the premise that the proverbial nuclear genie can actually be put back in the bottle via unverifiable disarmament agreements, or any other means. Most Americans are not likely to support candidates who foolishly think this can be accomplished.

Rigorous opinion research in this area performed in recent years by the University of New Mexico suggests that a healthy majority of our countrymen would agree with one of the most highly decorated and regarded former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John W. Vessey. In the course of the CTBT debate last fall, he told the Senate:

It is unlikely that God will permit us to 'uninvent' nuclear weapons. Some nation, or power, will be the preeminent nuclear power in the world. I, for one, believe that at least under present and foreseeable conditions, the world will be safer if that power is the United States of America. We jeopardize maintaining that condition by eschewing the development of new nuclear weapons and by ruling out testing if and when it is needed.

Indeed, the majority of our countrymen would be appalled to learn how far towards unilateral nuclear disarmament the Clinton-Gore Administration has actually taken this country. Four years ago, the handwriting was already on the wall, as Rep. Floyd Spence (R-SC), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, noted in October 1996:

The past four years have witnessed the dramatic decline of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and the uniquely skilled workforce that is responsible for maintaining our nuclear deterrent. The Administration's laissez-faire approach to stewardship of the nuclear stockpile, within the broader context of its support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, is clearly threatening the Nation's long-term ability to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile....In my mind, it's no longer a question of the Administration's 'benign neglect' of our Nation's nuclear forces, but instead, a compelling case can be made that it is a matter of 'erosion by design.'

Fire When Ready
Even if Al Gore had not shown his true, looney-left stripes by declaring his fealty to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, candidate Bush would have been well-advised to make an issue of the Clinton-Gore team's "erosion by design" of our nuclear deterrent force. 

Now that Gore has picked a fight over the issue, however, Gov. Bush — and every other Republican — must offer the electorate the clearest possible choice: On the one hand, between someone who values and is determined to preserve America's nuclear deterrent, and someone who bears considerable personal responsibility for its evisceration over the past eight years.

For the GOP standard-bearer to be seen as credible in this area, though, he must eschew the siren's song offered by those who favor "de-alerting" U.S. nuclear forces. The "nuclear freeze" crowd has long viewed this partial dismantling of the American arsenal as an important — and seductive — step toward the fulfillment of their denuclearization agenda.

The bad news is that, in arguing last May that he no longer saw any need to view the Russians as an enemy — and therefore to allow them to exercise a veto over U.S. missile defense options — Gov. Bush signaled his willingness not only to cut American nuclear forces deeply and unilaterally, but to de-alert them, as well:

The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status — another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation. Preparation for quick launch — within minutes after warning of an attack — was the rule during the era of superpower rivalry. But today, for two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch.

Importantly, Gov. Bush did say at the time that he would undertake formal reviews with his Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff before either cutting or de-alerting U.S. nuclear forces. This is a sensible and necessary step. More recently, though, Mr. Bush has spoken of using funds freed up by de-alerting to pay for needed modernization of other weapon systems. Such statements suggest a distorted, Alice-in-Wonderland-like process that would involve deciding first and reviewing later.

Gov. Bush has a unique opportunity to stop the hemorrhage that is afflicting the ultimate guarantor of our security. It is every bit as important to attend to the readiness, morale, and physical-plant need for recapitalization and security of the United States' nuclear arsenal and supporting infrastructure as it is for the nation's conventional forces. The place to start is by taking issue publicly and aggressively with Vice President Gore's denuclearization priorities and policies.