News Review Special Edition

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International Developments, February 1 - April 1, 2003

Republican House Policy Committee Sets Out Ambitious Nuclear Weapons Agenda

On February 13, a far-ranging report on US nuclear weapons policy was released by the Republican Party's House Subcommittee of National Security and Foreign Affairs. The subcommittee, chaired by New Mexico Representative Heather Wilson, reports to the House Policy Committee working to coordinate the party's overall policy priorities and initiatives. In her foreword to the study, entitled Differentiation and Defense: An Agenda for the Nuclear Weapons Program, Wilson writes: "In the 1970s and 1980s, a significant number of members of Congress were involved in and informed on matters relating to nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons complex. That is less true today. Members of our subcommittee felt it was time to review and reconsider these questions. The recommendations contained in the report have implications across a wide range of departments, budgets and programs."

The basic perspective of the 24-member panel - the need to supplement traditional deterrence with a range of nuclear development and use policies differentiated to meet new threats - is set out as follows in the Executive Summary:

"[D]eterrence - the capacity to dissuade others from taking action contrary to our vital interests by the maintenance of overwhelming power - will continue to be a vital part of our security strategy. But the capabilities required for effective deterrence have changed. In particular, we must be able to hold at risk things which are of value in each non-allied state that has nuclear weapons. This differentiation requires that we maintain a variety of capabilities and options, developed in advance, for the President to have at his disposal. By having them at his disposal, the United States will be more likely to avoid war, control the escalation of a conflict, or end a conflict on terms acceptable to us. A stockpile of 1,700 to 2,200 weapons [as envisaged in the Moscow Treaty] should be adequate for deterrence, but we will need to hold at risk hard and deeply buried targets and extend the life of the nuclear stockpile through the stockpile life extension scheme."

In a section of 'The End of Arms Control', the report notes: "The Moscow Treaty formalized decisions already made. It sealed a gentleman's agreement. It was not a forum where rivals sought advantage or disadvantage and wrangled over arcane detail as was the case in past arms control talks. The era of arms control with the former Soviet empire is over. In its place is a much richer, multifaceted relationship."

The study makes twelve recommendations:

"1. Continue to support the development, testing and eventual deployment of ballistic missile defense systems as an integrated element of deterrence and national security.

2. Accelerate the development of tools to detect, disrupt or defeat weapons of mass destruction before they can be used.

3. Fund the service life extension program for the nuclear stockpile and carefully monitor the implementation of this program over the next decade.

4. Require and support a test readiness program that could achieve an underground diagnostic test within 18 months.

5. Continue to support the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship program.

6. Support the study and evaluation of munitions, including nuclear, to hold hard and deeply buried targets at risk.

7. Support the revitalization of the nuclear weapons advanced development program consistent with the capabilities-based approach for national security. Consider repealing the ban against research on low-yield nuclear weapons.

8. Support research and development efforts for homeland security including technologies to sense and identify nuclear materials, monitor air, water and food for contaminants, remotely locate nuclear materials over large areas, disable explosives without detonating them, and disable bombs containing nuclear material.

9. Improve our nuclear non-proliferation programs by involving the private sector in ways to benefit Russia's economy and US security, expanding programs to improve Russian material control and accountability systems, and co-developing with Russia means to detect and interdict the movement of nuclear materials.

10. Require that the US in cooperation with our allies reinvigorate supplier control regimes to thwart countries selling technologies for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

11. Invest in technologies and capabilities to disrupt the supply and efficacy of weapons of mass destruction being sought by countries and sub-state entities whose interests are contrary to our own.

12. Support the modernization of the NNSA complex of laboratories, manufacturing facilities, Science Based Stockpile Stewardship program, weapon life extension program, and advanced development programs so that the workforce will be fully capable of maintaining and certifying the nuclear weapons stockpile."

Note: the Editor is grateful to David Culp, Legislative Representative of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (http://www.fcnl.org) for drawing attention to the release of the House Policy Subcommittee report.

Report: Differentiation and Defense: An Agenda for the Nuclear Weapons Program, House Policy Committee Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, February 13, website of Republican Representative Heather Wilson, http://wilson.house.gov.

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