WASHINGTON: The Trump administration plans to loosen constraints on the useof nuclear weapons and develop a new low-yield nuclear warhead for USTrident missiles, according to a former official who has seen the mostrecent draft of a policy review, reported The Guardianlink>.
Jon Wolfsthal, who was special assistant to Barack Obama on arms controland nonproliferation, said the new nuclear posture review prepared by thePentagon, envisages a modified version of the Trident D5 submarine-launchedmissiles with only part of its normal warhead, with the intention ofdeterring Russia from using tactical warheads in a conflict in EasternEurope.
The new nuclear policy is significantly more hawkish that the postureadopted by the Obama administration, which sought to reduce the role ofnuclear weapons in US defence.
Arms control advocates have voiced alarm at the new proposal to makesmaller, more “usable” nuclear weapons, arguing it makes a nuclear war morelikely, especially in view of what they see as Donald Trump’s volatilityand readiness to brandish the US arsenal in showdowns with the nation’sadversaries.
The NPR also expands the circumstances in which the US might use itsnuclear arsenal, to include a response to a non-nuclear attack that causedmass casualties, or was aimed at critical infrastructure or nuclear commandand control sites.
The nuclear posture review (NPR), the first in eight years, is expected tobe published after Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech at the end ofJanuary.
Wolfsthal, who has reviewed what he understands to be the final draft ofthe review, said it states that the US will start work on reintroducing asea-launched nuclear cruise missile, as a counter to a new ground-launchedcruise missile the US has accused Russia of developing in violation of the1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Wolfsthal said that earlier drafts of the NPR were even more hawkish. Thefinal draft drops proposals to develop a nuclear hyper-glide weapon, and toremove assurances to non-nuclear weapons states that the US will not useits nuclear arsenal against them.
“My read is this is a walk-back from how extreme it was early on. Itdoesn’t have as much terrible stuff in it as it did originally,” Wolfsthalsaid. “But it’s still bad.”
“What I’ve been told by the people who wrote the thing was what they weretrying to do was to send a clear deterrent message to Russians, the NorthKorean and the Chinese. And there is pretty good, moderate but stronglanguage that makes clear that any attempt by Russia or North Korea to usenuclear weapons would result in a massive consequence for them and I thinkthat’s actually moderate, centrist and probably very much needed.”
“Where they go overboard, is where they say that in order to make thatcredible the US needs to develop two new types of nuclear weapons,” headded.
Wolfsthal said the modified Trident warhead, with just the primary(fission) part of its thermonuclear warhead, was “totally unnecessary” asthe US already has low-yield weapons, B61 gravity bombs and air-launchedcruise missiles, in its arsenal.
He also said it was “pretty dumb” to put a low-yield “tactical” weapon onthe planned new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, because firingit would give away a submarine’s position.
“We spend $5bn per submarine to make it invisible and we put a lot ofwarheads on each submarine and so what they want to do is take one missile,put one small warhead on it and launch it first, so the submarine isvulnerable to Russian attack.” Wolfsthal said. “That strikes me as beingunsustainable from a naval strategy point of view.”
The development of a low-yield warhead for a sea-launched ballistic missileis based on the belief that in any conflict with Russia on NATO’s easternflank, the Russians would use a tactical nuclear weapon early on, tocompensate for their relative weakness in conventional arms. The Russians,the argument goes, would count on US reluctance to use the massive warheadson its existing weapons, leading Washington to back down.
Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at theFederation of American Scientists, said that justification for developingthe new weapons was incoherent.
“It assumes that the intelligence community has determined that one orseveral adversaries out there are gambling that the US would beself-deterred from using a ballistic missile warhead because they havelarger yield. That’s just not the case. We have never, ever heard anyonesay that is so,” Kristensen said.
“I don’t think any adversary – certainly not Russia, – would gamble that ifthey did something with nukes that were low yield that we would notrespond. That’s completely ludicrous,” he added. “I think this is abouthaving some warhead work at the laboratories and exploring options. I don’tsee this as a real mission.”
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, said that thedevelopment of new weapons in the US nuclear arsenal was “dangerous, ColdWar thinking”.
“The United States already possesses a diverse array of nuclearcapabilities, and there is no evidence that more usable weapons willstrengthen deterrence of adversaries or compel them to make differentchoices about their arsenals,” Kimball wrote on the Arms ControlToday website.
He also cautioned against moves to broaden the circumstances in whichnuclear weapons would be used.
“The use of even a small number of these weapons would be catastrophic,”Kimball said. “Threatening nuclear attack to counter new kinds of‘asymmetric’ threats is unnecessary, would increase the risk of nuclearweapons use, and would make it easier for other countries to justifyexcessive roles for nuclear weapons in their policies.”