Facing a Second Nuclear Age

August 3, 2003
 By WILLIAM J. BROAD 


 This week, ten minutes by car south of Omaha, Neb., the
United States Strategic Command is holding a
little-advertised meeting at which the Bush administration
is to solidify its plans for acquiring a new generation of
nuclear arms. Topping the wish list are weapons meant to
penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The
Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small,
now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for
ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. 

Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department
wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small
nuclear arms - ranging from a fraction the size of the
Hiroshima bomb to several times as large - that could
pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds
into radioactive dust. 

"With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets
could be attacked," the administration said in its Nuclear
Posture Review, which it sent to Congress last year. 

Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush
administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived
dangers. 

While initiatives like pre-emptive war have gotten most of
the headlines (understandably, given the invasion of Iraq
and its shaky aftermath), the administration is hard at
work on other ways to counteract the spread of weapons like
nuclear arms. Federal and private experts agree that with
the notable exception of North Korea, diplomacy and arms
control, for now, have taken a back seat to muscle flexing.


For instance, as part of its missile defense program, on
which nearly $8 billion is being spent this year, the
administration is erecting a rudimentary system of
ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California. By late
next year, 10 interceptors are supposed to be ready to zap
any warheads that North Korea might lob at the United
States. Whether the system would work as advertised is open
to doubt. But, then, so is whether North Korea could - or
would - ever directly attack the United States. 

Skeptics are more likely to think that North Korea has
nuclear blackmail in mind, and that what the White House
really is doing is an election-year bit of showing its
determination, even as it moves toward negotiating with
Pyongyang. Late last week, there were even signs that the
North Koreans were beginning to consider a principal
American demand - that they accede to talks not with the
United States alone, but including other powers like China,
Russia and Japan. 

Still, while critics may berate the administration's plans
and responses, the long-term dangers are considered real.
Most alarming are the declared effort by North Korea to
build a nuclear arsenal and a presumed effort by Iran.
Experts talk of wide repercussions - of an atomic Iran
inspiring nuclear ambitions in other Middle Eastern
countries, and of North Korea prompting rapid proliferation
in the Far East. 

Japan is considered a likely flash point, despite its
historic disdain for things nuclear after the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nisohachi Hyodo, once seen as part
of the lunatic fringe for promoting a plan by which Japan
would quickly acquire nuclear arms, now has his own radio
program on a major Tokyo station and is a popular speaker
on college campuses. 

And if Japan went nuclear, experts say, China might feel
compelled to expand its own arsenal. 

Paul Bracken, a Yale political scientist who described the
second nuclear age in "Fire in the East" (HarperCollins,
1999), argued that the danger lies not just in the spread
of nuclear arms but in the culture of the second age. He
said most of the new powers are poor, unlike their atomic
predecessors. Thus, India, Pakistan and North Korea are
cannibalizing their conventional forces to finance their
atomic and missile ambitions. In a crisis, he said, the
military repercussions of that trend could erode the
traditional restraints on nuclear arms. Pakistan, he said,
"will be forced to use them earlier." 

Perhaps least-known of the administration's responses to
the second age is its effort to fight arms of mass
destruction with arms of mass destruction. Advocates say
that relatively small nuclear weapons that burrowed deep
into the ground to destroy enemy bunkers would cause
reduced collateral damage - that is, less accidental
destruction beyond the intended target. 

"These kinds of capabilities could contribute to our
ability to prevent attacks by deterring them," said Keith
B. Payne, who from April 2002 to this May argued for the
new arms as deputy assistant secretary of defense for
forces policy. "If an opponent thinks he has a sanctuary,
he could be emboldened to aggression." 

Dr. Payne, who plans to be at the Omaha meeting, is now
president of the National Institute for Public Policy, a
Washington research group. He added that the new arms might
dissuade an enemy from ever building deep bunkers. "It's
not worth the investment," he said. 

Critics hate the proposed arms, fearing that their relative
smallness will breech the firewall between conventional and
nuclear war and pose a new threat to world security. They
also question whether radioactive fallout can be contained
and denounce the project's overall secrecy. 

"We worked hard to get civilian control over nuclear arms,"
said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a
private organization in Albuquerque that monitors arms
labs. "Even though nuclear weapons are inimical to the
democratic spirit, the idea of these being made by a small
minority is especially dangerous." 

Dr. Payne challenged the idea that small weapons would
lower the bar for nuclear war, saying America had deployed
very small atomic arms in the past. "There's no evidence
I've seen," he said, "that these made any U.S. president
anything other than very reluctant to think about the use
of nuclear weapons." 

If the arms are ever built, critics say, the biggest hurdle
to bunker busting may be targeting. Atomic intelligence is
notoriously crude, as the failed weapons hunt in Iraq
suggests. Recently, America's spies have also had trouble
tracking nuclear arms production in Iran and in North
Korea, which has a maze of secret sites and buried bunkers.


Congress, too, is uneasy about the new weapons, which are
still in the research stage. Last month, a House
appropriations subcommittee cut back on the
administration's 2004 budget request for the arms, citing
organizational disarray among the nation's bomb makers and
calling "pursuit of a broad range of new initiatives
premature." 

Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council,
a private group in Washington that monitors nuclear trends,
said the rebuff from the Republican-led House was
surprising. "But they may buy it," he added, "if the
administration comes up with a clearer plan." 

That tops the agenda this Wednesday and Thursday at Offutt
Air Force Base south of Omaha. Air Force Maj. Michael
Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said the meeting will
involve some 150 people from weapons labs, the Defense and
State Departments, the Energy Department, its National
Nuclear Security Administration and the White House. 

The United States Strategic Command, the host, controls the
nation's deployed nuclear arms and writes the war plans for
their use. 

Eager to shed light on the secretive meeting, peace
advocates organized a descent on Omaha this weekend to
protest the new arms with educational workshops, a rally, a
commemoration of the Japanese bombings, a peace concert and
a vigil. 

Dr. Bracken, the Yale political scientist, said the
administration has a historic opportunity, of the
Nixon-in-China variety, to pioneer a new kind of arms
control that actually lowers the risk of war. 

For instance, he said, the United States could renounce the
first use of nuclear arms. He said that step would help
counteract the current downward spiral toward a lower
nuclear threshold. "In the cold war you needed to retain
that," he said of the threat to use nuclear arms first.
"But today, with more players in the game, there's a lot to
be gained by giving it up." 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company