DISARMAMENT-U.S.: Top Nuclear General Calls for Weapon’s Elimination

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 1996 (IPS) - In a major boost for disarmament activists, the former commander of the world’s mightiest nuclear arsenal has called on all countries, including his own United States, to rid the world of all nuclear weapons.

Speaking to the National Press Club here Wednesday, Ret. Air Force Gen. George Lee Butler, who headed the U.S. Strategic Air Command from 1992 through 1994, said he had travelled a “long and arduous journey” before concluding that “a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons.”

In a direct challenge to the policy of the major declared nuclear powers, including the United States, Butler warned “that (nuclear) proliferation cannot be contained in a world where a handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves the privilege of owning nuclear weapons and extol the ultimate security assurances they assert such weapons convey.”

“Elegant theories of deterrence wilt in the crucible of impending nuclear war,” he declared, calling on Washington to now undertake a “sweeping review” of its nuclear policies and strategies with a view to negotiating sharp reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles.

“It’s a powerful statement,” said Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Centre, an independent research group here. “At a minimum, it will make it much easier for President (Bill) Clinton to move towards deeper cuts in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) process.

“He has also given the notion of global elimination of nuclear weapons much greater standing,” Krepon added.

Butler was joined at the podium by Ret. Army Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, former commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The two generals released a joint statement which said that “the ultimate objective of phased reductions (in nuclear weapons) must be the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from all nations.”

The generals spoke on the eve of the anticipated release Thursday of a statement by some 50 retired generals and admirals from 17 countries around the world in favour of a plan designed to achieve the “continuous, complete and irrevocable elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Among the signers from the declared nuclear states are 19 U.S. and 18 Russian military leaders, as well as one French admiral and four top British military officers.

Aside from Goodpaster and Butler, the most significant U.S. backers are Gen. John Galvin, a former NATO commander; Gen. H. Horner; a former commander of the U.S. Space Command; and Gen. William Odom, a former director of the super-secret U.S. National Security Agency who was considered one of the Pentagon’s foremost hawks during the Cold War.

Like Butler, these officers appear most concerned about the enormous costs and apocalyptic risks posed by nuclear weapons and are arguing for a new look at their relevance to a post-Cold War world.

“This could help change the terms of the debate,” Krepon told IPS after the Butler’s speech. “He’s asking, ‘What are these weapons for? When are we going to use them?’ These questions haven’t been seriously addressed since the end of the Cold War.”

Butler’s experience makes him a unique force in the debate, according to Krepon. He has spent virtually his entire 27-year military career at the centre of U.S. nuclear strategy.

“No one comes to this issue with a resume like Lee Butler,” Krepon said.

Butler cited several major reasons for what he called his “deeply held conviction.” He said policymakers had failed to fully grasp nuclear weapons’ “monstrous effects, …poisoning the earth and deforming its inhabitants.”

He added that he felt a “deepening dismay at the prolongation of Cold War policies and practices, in a world where our security interests have been utterly transformed.” For example, Butler said, the recent suggestions that nuclear weapons could be an appropriate response to chemical or biological attack caused him “acute unease.”

He also expressed “grave doubt that the present highly discriminatory regime of nuclear and non-nuclear states can long endure absent a credible commitment by the nuclear powers to eliminate their arsenals.”

This was a reference to the recently concluded Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty where the largely Third World, non-aligned bloc pressed unsuccessfully for the nuclear “haves” to commit themselves to a definite process that will end in the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

India, a nuclear state which has never officially declared its status as such, has vowed not to sign the CTBT in part because the declared nuclear powers will not commit themselves to a deadline for eliminating their own arsenals.

The nuclear powers, Butler said, must now ask “whether the world better served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear reductions toward some indeterminate endpoint; or by an unequivocal commitment on the part of the nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of eliminating these arsenals in their entirety.”

Three “crucial conditions” must be satisfied before the world can proceed toward that goal, he added.

“First and foremost is for the declared nuclear weapon states to accept that the Cold War is in fact over.” That would permit them to “break free” of the attitudes and habits which support the maintenance of “enormous inventories” of nuclear arms despite recent treaties.

Second, Butler said, the undeclared nuclear states, which include India, Pakistan and Israel, should “embrace the harsh lessons of the Cold War: that nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, hugely expensive and militarily inefficient. …”

Finally, the United States, which still has 3,500 nuclear warheads deployed, should review its 1993 decision to maintain them as a hedge against “the resurgence of a hostile Russia.” He said that policy was “regrettable,” because it both fosters distrust in Moscow and perpetuates attitudes that prevent much sharper reductions in the START process.