Clinton’s not-so-hidden nuclear agenda

President Clinton revealed an ominous facet of his national security agenda recently: He disclosed that he hopes to "denuclearize the world." Not "maintain nuclear forces at lower levels," not "achieve radical cuts in nuclear weapons," not "prevent further nuclear proliferation" but "denuclearize the world."

Now, this statement was made in the course of one of the president’s effusive pep-talks about the need to throw immense quantities of new Western money at Boris Yeltsin — even before it is clear that Mr. Yeltsin will be the Russian leader who gets to spend it or just what it will be spent on. Some might argue that this undisciplined, precipitous policy initiative demonstrates a lack of common sense that amounts to temporary insanity, a product of the Group of Seven’s lemming-like rush to be seen to be doing something, anything to "save" Mr. Yeltsin.

According to this logic, the president’s claims about the benefits of his Russian policy — whether in terms of "future trade opportunities" and new American jobs, "making the world a safer place" or saving "billions of dollars we don’t have to spend maintaining a nuclear arsenal" — are just the kinds of promises politicians like Bill Clinton always make but feel no compunction about keeping. In other words, as the Australians say, "No worry, mate"; he doesn’t mean it.

Unfortunately, denuclearizing the United States — if not the world — appears to be one promise Mr. Clinton will keep, whether he means to or not. If it doesn’t happen on this president’s watch, the consequences of his actions will almost certainly ensure that the nation is effectively nuclear disarmed during one of his successors’ administrations.

Consider the following steps in this direction that either have been inherited by President Clinton and will go uncorrected during his term in office, have already been formally adopted by his administration, or are now in the works:

• On March 25, 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary decided against bringing back on-line the nation’s only dedicated tritium-production facility — the "K" reactor at Savannah River, S.C. Tritium is a radioactive gas essential to the effective operation of modern U.S. nuclear weapons; it decays over 12 years and must be replenished for such weapons to perform properly. It is, therefore, absolutely axiomatic: If there is no source of fresh tritium, the nation will, within a matter of a decade or so, be left without a viable nuclear deterrent.

 

• To make matters worse, on March 7, 1993, Mrs. O’Leary finalized a Bush decision to cancel design and construction of a New Production Reactor (NPR) that was intended to replace the obsolete "K" reactor. Given that it would take a minimum of 10 years to bring such a new facility on-line, it would have been a close call to start up this new source of tritium before current stocks were completely depleted even if Mrs. O’Leary’s predecessor, Adm. James Watkins, had not derailed it. As things stand now, however, even a crash program to resuscitate the NPR would be unlikely to prevent a period of virtual U.S. nuclear impotence.

 

• The Clinton administration’s new technology policy is likely to have a comparably devastating impact on another important element of the nation’s nuclear weapons infrastructure: the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories. In recent years, these extraordinary centers of technical excellence have tried to adapt to reduced nuclear weapons-related workloads by working on environmental and other civilian challenges. (Along the way, a number of lab scientists have been given contracts that assure they will not be asked to work on nuclear weaponry.) This process will be vastly accelerated by an administration that seems to view defense research as little more than a pot of money to be drawn upon for other purposes and that aspires to converting the DOE laboratories largely to commercial technology endeavors.

 

• This objective will also be advanced by an initiative President Clinton will be exploring with Mr. Yeltsin if their summit occurs as scheduled next week: a complete ban on U.S. and Russian nuclear testing. Long an objective of those who want to "denuclearize" the United States, a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) may well be agreed in principle by the two leaders.

 

If so, an indispensable means of assuring the reliability, safety and credibility of the U.S. deterrent will be prohibited. As a result, the Department of Energy’s laboratories will lose not only an important diagnostic tool but also one of the principal means of training and retaining competent nuclear weapons designers and trouble-shooters.

 

• Incredibly, at the same time it is eviscerating the future basis for U.S. nuclear deterrence, the Clinton administration is aggressively demolishing whatever opportunity remains to provide a substitute means of providing for the nation’s strategic security, namely through active defenses. It proposes a 40 percent reduction in the Bush budget request for SDI and reportedly wants to terminate discussions with the Russians that might lead to amendments or joint abandonment of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — steps necessary to permit effective defenses against missile attack.

In short, even as the North Koreans, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and Pakistanis, among others, are showing that nations around the world are determined to "go nuclear," the United States is set to "go un-nuclear." This dangerous prospect must dissuade President Clinton from making any more promises about "continu[ing] to denuclearize the world" and from taking any further steps to denuclearize the United States.