The Bush administration is correct to consider using nuclear weapons to combat rogue states with other weapons of mass destruction, two defense analysts wrote in today’s Washington Post (see GSN, March 14).

“The reality is that nuclear weapons have a useful role to play in deterring or defeating the use of certain weapons of mass destruction,” wrote Richard Sokolsky and Eugene Rumer of the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.

Countries hostile to the United States are developing weapons of mass destruction hidden in underground sites, and their leaders might not be deterred by “traditional threats of massive nuclear retaliation,” the authors wrote.

The United States could threaten to use its large, Cold War-era nuclear weapons against a state that attacks with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but rogue states might not take the threat seriously due to the huge loss of life it would cause.

Therefore, developing smaller nuclear weapons that could destroy weapons of mass destruction hidden in underground bunkers or other specific targets, as the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review reportedly suggests, would act as a more serious deterrent, Sokolsky and Rumer wrote (see GSN, March 11).

The authors presented a scenario in which thousands of U.S. citizens die from a biological attack and the United States knows a particular country is responsible and is planning more attacks.  Also in the scenario, the United States could only destroy its enemy’s biological weapons with nuclear weapons.

“Under these conditions, why shouldn’t the president have the option of limiting further American deaths?” the authors wrote.

Some critics of the Nuclear Posture Review have said that by suggesting the use of nuclear weapons to respond to chemical or biological attacks, the review changes traditional U.S. policy of using nuclear weapons only when national survival is on the line.

Sokolsky and Rumer say such criticism misrepresents historical U.S. policy.  Although the United States said in 1978 that it would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, senior officials have said over the past decade that the United States could use nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological — as well as nuclear — attacks.

During the Cold War, NATO policy called on members to use nuclear weapons to deter or defeat a conventional attack from members of the Warsaw Pact, the authors wrote.

Developing smaller, more tactical nuclear weapons and threatening to use them in retaliation for biological or chemical attacks would not increase nuclear proliferation, the authors wrote.  U.S. nuclear policy has little effect on decisions by Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan and India to pursue nuclear programs, the authors wrote (Sokolsky/Rumer, Washington Post, March 15).

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