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The New Republic
February 17, 2003
Fallout
By Michael Levi
If you watched the Super Bowl in Washington, D.C., you may have seen an ad warning that war with Iraq could end with the use of nuclear weapons. The spot, produced by the antiwar group MoveOn.org, is a remake of Lyndon Johnson's famous 1964 campaign commercial, which implied that Barry Goldwater might lead the United States into nuclear war. Like Johnson's ad, which was pulled after running only once, the spot indulges in more than a bit of hyperbole but still contains a troubling kernel of truth.
Since taking office, President George W. Bush has dangerously and unnecessarily blurred the line between conventional and nuclear weapons. Prodded by nuclear weapons scientists and a few narrow-minded ideologues--such as Wayne Allard, chair of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and Curt Weldon, number two on the House Armed Services Committee--the administration has been groping since early 2001 to find military missions for tactical nuclear weapons. In the past few weeks, administration officials have made not-so-veiled threats that the United States might use nuclear weapons against Iraq. These threats have alarmed the public and hurt America's image--and for no good reason: Tactical nuclear weapons have little if any military value.
For much of the cold war, American strategists planned to use nuclear weapons to repel superior Soviet conventional forces. During the Gulf war--despite possessing overwhelming conventional power--military planners considered using nuclear weapons to incinerate Iraqi stockpiles of biological weapons; they eventually settled on high explosives. Indeed, the Gulf war experience convinced many hawkish military thinkers that tactical nuclear weapons had become obsolete. Under the Clinton administration, the preemptive use of nuclear weapons was not official policy. Yet some analysts remained attached to a few niche roles for battlefield nuclear bombs. Two missions topped their lists: destroying underground bunkers and neutralizing the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons they often contain. Last March, these activists got a boost from the Bush administration's classified Nuclear Posture Review, which argued that "nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack (for example, deep underground bunkers or bioweapon facilities)." Forced to choose between nuking Saddam Hussein and leaving him be, they asked, which would you pick?
Given the immense power of nuclear weapons, it's natural to imagine them easily obliterating underground hideouts. Saddam, for example, is believed to have several underground command centers, though the United States is unlikely to know the details of these bunkers well enough to be able to penetrate them all with explosives. Nuclear bunker-busters, though, are far less effective than most suppose. The Little Boy bomb dropped over Hiroshima--20,000 times larger than Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bomb--destroyed everything within one mile of ground zero. Yet the same bomb detonated against a granite-walled bunker would be at least 30 times less effective. Even the biggest nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal--the nine-megaton B-53--would leave some 200-meter-deep bunkers intact.
And that's the good news. To destroy underground bunkers and chemical or biological agents, nuclear weapons must be detonated at or below the earth's surface. Their radioactive products attach to bits of earth and rock, falling back to the ground within minutes or hours, before their radioactivity has had time to decay. For all their physical destructiveness, the nuclear weapons that exploded 1,000 feet over Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced little lingering fallout; people entering the cities immediately after the attacks were unharmed. In contrast, radioactive fallout from a Hiroshima-sized bomb detonated at ground level would kill civilians as far as 30 kilometers downwind; for our nine-megaton bomb, that distance would be increased more than tenfold. That bomb, if dropped in western Iraq, could contaminate cities as far away as Tel Aviv. American troops would have to avoid contaminated zones, complicating battlefield strategy and tactics.
Fortunately, the hypothetical choice presented by nuclear weapons proponents such as Weldon--nuke Saddam or leave him alone--is a false one. Since before the Gulf war, American engineers have been developing an array of techniques and technologies specially designed to attack underground bunkers. While some work has focused on bruteforce solutions--building conventional bombs with bigger blasts and high-speed missiles that penetrate deeper underground--the scientists have also made great strides in learning to disable enemy bunkers without physically destroying them. By collapsing entrance tunnels, severing power lines, bombing communications antennae, and closing ventilation ducts, American forces can "functionally" destroy underground facilities. Special forces, featured in Afghanistan, could play a critical role. In contrast with physically destroying facilities, this strategy would allow American troops to enter bunkers later and collect vital intelligence.
Biological and chemical targets present a different challenge since a U.S. attack could spread deadly agents across the countryside. Indeed, a typical bomb detonated against a facility holding a substantial amount of anthrax could, depending on the conditions, kill as many people as a small nuclear weapon. But again, the apparent choices--incinerate the anthrax with a nuclear bomb but spread radioactive fallout, or spread live anthrax but avoid nuclear fallout--are not the only ones. The United States has developed thermobaric bombs that generate high temperatures in closed spaces, neutralizing exposed spores. Air Force laboratories are also developing potent payloads that chemically neutralize agents on contact. And, if chemical or biological agents are accidentally dispersed, American troops can defend themselves with protective gear. In contrast, special clothing cannot provide complete protection against the radioactive fallout from friendly nuclear fire.
America's greatest weakness is in intelligence, not explosive power. Osama bin Laden survived in Afghanistan not because our bombs were too small but because we could not find him. Most of Saddam's bioweapons survived the Gulf war unscathed not because we feared collateral damage but because we did not yet know Saddam's stockpiles existed; even today, inspectors are unable to find Saddam's biological weapons. And, even if we choose to attack North Korea's nuclear program, we will be unable to destroy its uranium-enrichment facilities, not for lack of weaponry but because we do not know where these sites are.
Political fallout from the use, or even threat, of nuclear weapons elevates this discussion beyond mere technical quibbling. The Bush administration seems oblivious to the irony in using nuclear weapons to fight a war against nuclear proliferation. Certainly, the nuclear taboo is not a panacea--Kim Jong Il and Saddam care little about international norms--but it is still valuable. By needlessly claiming that we need nuclear weapons to fill military holes, we confirm all the worst international stereotypes about a trigger-happy Bush administration, undermine our argument that others should forego them, and weaken our coalitions. We weaken our coalitions by undermining global regimes, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that our allies strongly support.
The administration's "clarifications" are only making things worse. Following a Los Angeles Times revelation of nuclear contingency-planning against Iraq, the White House sent Chief of Staff Andy Card to "Meet the Press" to explain. After bumbling through a technical discussion of Iraq's nuclear program, Card asserted unhelpfully that the United States would neither rule in nor rule out nuclear attacks. Two days later, responding to reporters in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones--a strange choice for handling this issue--remarked, "Will the United States use limited nuclear weapons in Iraq? The answer is 'No.'" Her carelessly worded comment was promptly interpreted as ruling out limited nuclear strikes (Associated Press), all nuclear strikes (Agence France-Presse), and strikes using nuclear weapons of limited power (Russia's TASS).
Despite the administration's bungled pronouncements, some of its most hawkish backers are getting the right picture. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" just before Andy Card's interview, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle argued, "I can't think of a target of interest in a conflict with Iraq that could not be dealt with effectively by conventional weapons, non-nuclear weapons. ... I can't see why we would wish to use a nuclear weapon." The Prince of Darkness isn't about to campaign to ban the bomb, but, like most others, he knows that tactical nuclear weapons aren't very useful. It's time Bush learned the same. |
