U.S. Should Cancel Plutonium Plant, Delay Uranium Facility: Expert Report Rachel Oswald October 17, 2013 WASHINGTON — The United States should cancel plans to build a multi-billion dollar plutonium research facility in New Mexico and postpone construction of an enriched-uranium processing plant in Tennessee, according to a report released Thursday by the Union of Concerned […]
The Hill OpEd: Some Pentagon Spending Actually Harms Our National Security by Lt. General Robert Gard
Published in The Hill on October 16, 2013. Article summary below, click here to read full article. By Lt. General Robert Gard A powerful U.S. military is indispensable to our national security; but in many ways, our bloated military budget has become a direct threat to the very security it is designed to create and […]
OtherWords.org OpEd: A Smarter Pentagon Budget
Published on OtherWords.org on October 30, 2013. By Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr. (USA, ret.) Our bloated military budget contributes significantly to our massive national debt and threatens the very security it’s intended to provide. Several expensive and unnecessary military programs are behind this paradox. The Pentagon should cut them from its $640.5 billion budget […]
Bloomberg Story on Iranian Nuclear Monitoring Proposal Quotes Laicie Heeley
Iran Offers More Monitoring to Prove It’s Nuclear-Weapons Free By Jonathan Tirone, Kambiz Foroohar & Indira A.R. Lakshmanan October 15, 2013 Iran proposed tighter monitoring of its nuclear program within a six-month period to verify it’s not pursuing atomic weapons during the first talks with world powers since it pledged to end a decade-old standoff. […]
Would the United States ever actually use nuclear weapons?
I’m way late in blurbing this, but I wrote my September Bulletin column on the conditions under which the United States might consider using nuclear weapons, using the debate over whether to use force in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons as a jump off point. Here’s how I began (and FYI I wrote it before Secretary of State Kerry’s maybe not so off the cuff remark led to a diplomatic deal with Russia that is at least for now leading toward Syria’s chemical disarmament):
The Syrian regime’s large-scale use of chemical weapons has prompted a vigorous discussion about whether the United States should respond with military force, and if so, how. Those advocating the use of force have debated options ranging from limited cruise missile strikes to a much larger campaign designed to mortally wound Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
One military option that has thankfully not been part of the debate is the use of nuclear weapons. Yet unbeknownst to many, the most recent Nuclear Posture Review—a US government assessment of the proper role of nuclear weapons—technically does not rule out using them in response to nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons use by states, like Syria, deemed to be in noncompliance with their nonproliferation obligations.
There is, on the other hand, apparently universal agreement that using nuclear weapons in the midst of another country’s civil war would be wildly inappropriate and ineffective. But Syria’s use of chemical weapons raises several important questions that bear on US policy: If Washington wouldn’t consider using nuclear weapons even where its own official policy allows it, under what circumstances would it actually contemplate using them? And if it did, how many might it use?
Apart from responding to another country’s first use, the scenarios under which a US president would consider authorizing the use of these weapons are so limited as to be almost inconceivable. Moreover, if the president did use nuclear weapons, he or she would likely need only a handful, not the thousands the United States currently possesses. While nuclear weapons still retain value as a deterrent, changing geopolitical and technological conditions have made them a niche weapon, not the bedrock of US security that some still claim they are.
You can read the whole thing here. In a future column I hope to explore what a force premised more heavily on retaliation, including numbers, force posture, and warhead and delivery system types, might look like.
