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U.S. Response: Experts Debate Bush’s Controversial Nonproliferation Strategy By David Ruppe Administration actions implementing the strategy include but are not limited to: declaring Iran, Iraq and North Korea to be an “axis of evil” (see GSN, Jan. 30, 2002), calling for an expanded justification for pre-emptive war (see GSN, July 15, 2002), abandoning of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pursuing national missile defenses (see GSN, June 13, 2002), opposing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, July 31, 2002), and interest in possibly developing and using new nuclear weapons (see GSN, Feb. 19). Various elements of the Bush WMD nonproliferation strategy — which experts generally agree prioritizes the prospect of military solutions over traditional instruments of arms control and nonproliferation — were publicly disclosed last year in several administration policy documents, as well as in policy statements by President George W. Bush. A debate among experts is now growing about the strategy’s wisdom, as it is put to the test with escalating crises in Iraq and North Korea. Critics charge the new approach to combating proliferation is self-defeating, potentially hastening the very behavior it is intended to curb. “Even if U.S. forces succeed quickly in separating [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] from his weapons of mass destruction, the war could accelerate proliferation,” wrote Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington in a recent article. Other states may feel threatened by the potential use of force against them as a disarmament tool and conclude that weapons of mass destruction are an effective deterrent, Krepon wrote. Administration officials and supporters, on the other hand, have argued Iraq must be disarmed by the prospect of force if necessary before it acquires nuclear capability or shares its most dangerous weapons with terrorists. They have asserted, further, that success in Iraq would discourage other potential proliferators by making clear that the United States will not tolerate WMD proliferation. “In the post-Cold War era, otherwise insignificant nations, or even terrorist groups, can vault onto the world stage with readily available technology. That’s why in today’s ugly world the United States needs to be prepared with a tough, effective array of military options — including nuclear options — and plans for their employment to deter, if possible, or to defeat, if necessary,” wrote David Smith, an analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy, in a recent opinion piece. Emphasis on Force The Bush administration strategy has numerous aspects, including an increasing priority placed on “counterproliferation” — the threat and use of U.S. military capabilities to address WMD proliferation — relative to diplomatic, economic, and political tools. While previous administrations have always kept the option of employing preventive war potential enemies, the Bush administration has elevated that tool into a core element of U.S. security strategy and its approach toward Iraq. “Our enemies are seeking weapons of mass destruction. America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed,” said the administration’s September 2002 National Security Strategy. Specific counterproliferation tools could include developing and using nuclear weapons to deter other countries from acquiring or using chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and to strike such enemy weapons buried deeply underground. Another facet of counterproliferation includes developing missile defenses, not just for defense, but also to “preserve U.S. freedom of action, and strengthen the credibility of U.S. alliance commitments,” according to the administration’s January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. As the role of military solutions is enhanced, traditional U.S. nonproliferation strategies have been downgraded, including arms control agreements, and application of the concepts of strategic containment and mutually assured destruction. The Bush administration over the past year has controversially sought to remove, weaken, or prevent arms control pacts that might compromise U.S. counterproliferation capabilities. The United States, for example, withdrew from the ABM Treaty in June and refuses to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty. Bush emphasized his approach in a major policy speech at West Point last June. “We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. We must ensure that key capabilities — detection, active and passive defenses, and counterforce capabilities — are integrated into our defense transformation and our homeland security systems. Approach Called Self Defeating Critics have charged the strategy’s various components may transform the international security system in many negative ways. The strategy could, they say, loosen international standards for using force, undermine the authority of the United Nations in deciding when force is acceptable, weaken the international taboo against renouncing international treaty commitments, and undermine norms prohibiting the development and use of nuclear weapons. North Korea has been cited as an example of the Bush administration’s strategy possibly backfiring. Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty earlier this year and is apparently accelerating its nuclear weapons development activities while citing a growing threat from the United States. “The way they’re committing counterproliferation is actually a stimulus to proliferation,” says Martin Butcher, an analyst with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Nonproliferation “has suffered severe setbacks over the past decade,” wrote the Stimson Center’s Krepon. “The Bush administration inherited this mess, and promptly made it worse by denigrating treaties, deterrence, export controls and multilateral diplomacy,” he wrote. Smith says proliferation occurred even when the United States did not play that role and cannot be pinned on Bush’s approach to dealing with it. “Why are we having this discussion? Because the nonproliferation regime has been undermined. … Then poor George Bush comes to office and hears, ‘Look what you’ve done with your new doctrine here.’ I think it’s just disingenuous. He’s got to do absolutely nothing with it. He’s looking at the situation as it is and trying to deal with it,” Smith said.Application of the strategy places the United States in the role of a global hegemon, wrote Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis last year, in an article praising the policy. “Pre-emption in turn requires hegemony,” he wrote, and cited the administration’s National Security Strategy goal of having U.S. forces “strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” Krepon contends hegemony, though perhaps intended to discourage proliferation, actually encourages it. “I think the counter to a hegemon is proliferation, and we’re seeing that happen,” he said. Gaddis and others say the international community has generally accepted U.S. hegemony, viewing it as “relatively benign.” Krepon says the pre-emption policy, however, has precipitated reactions abroad and at home that are undermining U.S. efforts to gain international support. “This is not something that has gone down very well internationally and it is not something that the American public feels terribly good about. It’s very hard in a democracy to get consensual agreement on waging a preventive war, even after 9/11. And it’s 15 times harder to do this in the U.N. Security Council,” he said. “The controversy in this area stems in part from the way in which the possibility of pre-emptive or preventative attack outside the confines of war undermines traditional notions of international sovereignty,” says Butcher. Smith acknowledges the dissatisfaction but contends the alternative is to continue to pursue strategies that have been proven ineffective. “What’s being tested here, the Bush doctrine or the United Nations? The real issue here is the people who have been criticizing us don’t take responsibility for their own words,” he said. New Era Requires New Strategy Advocates of the Bush strategy contend changes in the international system since the Cold War have brought new types of security challenges that warrant a new approach to international security. Administration officials have made a key assertion that unlike the former Soviet Union, some countries — particularly Iran, Iraq and North Korea — cannot be deterred by the massive U.S. nuclear and conventional superiority from attempting, or perhaps from cooperating with terrorists, to destroy the United States. “Some states” in the international community seek weapons of mass destruction not for deterrence, but “as tools of coercion and intimidation,” said the administration’s December 2002 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. “For them, these are not weapons of last resort, but militarily useful weapons of choice intended to overcome our nation’s advantages in conventional forces and to deter us from responding to aggression against our friends and allies in regions of vital interest,” it said. Critics of the administration’s strategy disagree that countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea cannot be deterred, arguing that Iraq was successfully deterred from using weapons of mass destruction during the 1991 Gulf War. They contend, furthermore, that threatening such countries with a pre-emptive, regime-ending attack, will encourage the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. A new approach to nonproliferation is therefore required to match the times. We need a new strategy to deal with proliferation and terrorism “that is not dominated by military strategy, but rather by what [Harvard University international security expert] Joseph Nye has described as ‘soft power,’ that is built around the economic and diplomatic strength of the United States and our allies,” Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, said recently. It is doubtful, however, that the Bush administration would adopt such a strategy. “There is no such soft power strategy in evidence so far that really could compete persuasively in a coherent way with the military strategy that’s been promoted as the solution to proliferation and terrorism,” Blair said.
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