US Defense Secretary
Expands Pre-Emptive War Doctrine to
Include Nuclear Strikes

ALEX LANTIER / WSWS 30oct2008

In a remarkable speech on nuclear policy delivered October 28 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), US Defense Secretary Robert Gates painted a dire portrait of international affairs and argued that Washington should expand the doctrine of pre-emptive war formulated by the Bush administration to include possible nuclear strikes.

It is widely rumored that, in the likely event that Democrat Barack Obama wins next week's US presidential election, Obama will keep Gates as defense secretary. Gates' speech, given in the waning days of the Bush presidency, has the character of a policy declaration of the next US administration.

Gates began by making extended and ominous parallels between the world situation today and that which prevailed at the founding of the Carnegie Institute in 1910, four years before the outbreak of World War I. At the time, he noted, Wall Street was passing through the panic of 1910-1911 and facing a credit crisis, the US had recently put down an insurgency in the Philippines at a cost of 4,200 American lives, comparable to today's US death toll in Iraq, and "Europe was arming itself to the teeth and forming a series of alliances whose implications were obvious to anyone who cared to look."

Gates argued that the pacifist illusions promoted by CEIP founder Andrew Carnegie—a US steel magnate at the turn of the 20th century, most famous in the working class movement for the brutal suppression of the 1892 Homestead strike against his company—— should not deter Washington from planning broader war.

He noted, "In August of 1913, Carnegie said that ‘the only measure required today for the maintenance of world peace is an agreement between three or four of the leading civilized powers... pledged to cooperate against disturbers of world peace.'" Gates pointed out that, writing four years later to President Woodrow Wilson, who had been elected in 1916 on a platform of keeping the US out of the world war, "the same Andrew Carnegie encouraged the president in the strongest terms to declare war, because, he wrote, ‘There is only one straight way of settlement.'"

Turning to US nuclear policy, Gates said, "As long as others have nuclear weapons, we must maintain some level of these weapons ourselves: to deter potential adversaries, and to reassure over two dozen allies and partners who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security—making it unnecessary for them to develop their own."

This comment gives a sense of the highly tense and unstable character of international relations, and the paranoia of US officials. Gates' fears about the spread of nuclear weapons are not limited to existing programs of "potential adversaries," among which Gates included "rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, or Russian or Chinese strategic modernization programs." His fears extend to the nuclear policy of all states, including current US allies.

Gates later repeated this point: "We simply cannot predict the future. [...] our adversaries and other nations will always seek whatever advantages they can find. Knowing that, we have to be prepared for contingencies we haven't even considered."

Gates' list of US-friendly states that have chosen not to develop nuclear weapons was significant: South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Libya. Two of the most obvious such countries—ex-World War II enemies Japan and Germany—were not included. Gates did not explain what political factors induced him to omit them.

Gates then issued a remarkable threat: "As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons—and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends—then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the US in the nuclear arena—or with other weapons of mass destruction—could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.

According to Gates, the US must be able to credibly threaten a nuclear holocaust against any state that "challenges" the US in the nuclear arena or with other "weapons of mass destruction." By his own words, such a challenge does not require a nation to threaten to attack the US. It does not even require that a nation possess nuclear weapons or other WMD. It is enough for a nation merely to "seek" such weapons for it to become a potential target for a preemptive "overwhelming, catastrophic response" from the United States.

Such a doctrine has immense implications not only for US nuclear weapons programs, but for the totality of US foreign policy. It stipulates that every foreign power in the world must believe that attempting to develop nuclear weapons invites US nuclear attack. Thus, the US would arguably be obliged to attack with nuclear weapons countries which it accused of developing nuclear weapons—such as Iran and North Korea—lest the rest of the world conclude that the US will not carry out its threats.

Gates is filling out the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war—announced in advance of the unprovoked invasion of Iraq based on lies about supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—with the proviso that a US first-strike can involve the large-scale use of nuclear weapons.

In his speech, he called for a substantial increase in nuclear weapons spending, including the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing. "There is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program," he declared.

Citing a "bleak" prognosis for overcoming technical and staffing problems of US strategic nuclear weapons programs, Gates explained that his policies involved the largest and most powerful US weapons: "The program we propose is not about new capabilities—suitcase bombs or bunker-busters or tactical nukes. [...] It is about the future credibility of our strategic deterrent."

Gates also addressed concerns about the command structure of the US Air Force's nuclear forces, sparked by his June 5 sackings of several top Air Force officials after it was discovered that US nuclear missile parts had been shipped to Taiwan. At the time, the World Socialist Web Site raised the question of whether the shipment to Taiwan had been part of an unofficial foreign policy carried out by rogue sections of the US military. However, the bourgeois press accepted official explanations that this had been a simple technical oversight.

But Gates' proposals centered not on fixing technical problems with Air Force shipping protocols, but rather on controlling Air Force policy. He announced measures to centralize "nuclear policy and oversight," including a new headquarters office at the Air Staff and a Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, which is to be tasked with "clearing up ambiguous chains of command that have created problems in the past."

Gates closed by listing several types of attack that the US might use "deterrence," nuclear or otherwise, to prevent. He spoke of developing "appropriate" responses to cyber-attacks on US computer systems, to deterring attacks on US communications satellites (which could be carried out only by countries with technologically advanced militaries) and of developing "new technologies to identify the forensic signature" of nuclear material, which would allow the US to "hold any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor or individual fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction."

It should be pointed out that several of these types of attack—especially cyber-attack and terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction—are by their nature difficult to track, and leave open the possibility of manipulation by Washington. This is perhaps best shown by the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were carried out using spores from a US Army lab at Fort Detrick and ultimately blamed on a US civilian scientist working at Fort Detrick, but which the media long blamed on Muslim terrorists.

In assessing the significance of Gates' remarkably bellicose comments, it should be noted that Gates' justification of pre-emptive nuclear war is not isolated. In April, then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that if Iran attacked Israel, the US would respond by "obliterating" Iran. These comments are further evidence that the US ruling class will pursue an even more aggressive foreign policy after the 2008 elections than before.

source: 1nov2008

Gates:
Long-Term Outlook for Nuke Safety is Bleak

ROBERT BURNS / AP / Washington Post 28oct2008

WASHINGTON — The long-term outlook for keeping U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable is "bleak," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. In part, he said, that was because the United States is experiencing a brain drain in the laboratories that design and develop the world's most powerful weapons.

Gates said America's more than 5,000 nuclear weapons are now safe and secure, but he sketched out a series of concerns about the future, while stressing that nuclear weapons must remain a viable part of the U.S. strategy for deterring attack as long as other countries have them.

"Hope as we will, the power of nuclear weapons and their strategic impact is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle at least for a very long time," he said in remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank that advocates the elimination of nuclear arms.

In a later question-and-answer session with his audience, Gates said he is concerned about the possibility that some Russian nuclear weapons from the old Soviet arsenal may not be fully accounted for.

"I have fairly high confidence that no strategic or modern tactical nuclear weapons have leaked" beyond Russian borders, Gates said. "What worries me are the tens of thousands of old nuclear mines, nuclear artillery shells and so on, because the reality is the Russians themselves probably don't have any idea how many of those they have or, potentially, where they are."

Gates also said that if were advising the next U.S. president, he would advocate new nuclear talks with Moscow.

"I believe we should go for another agreement with the Russians," he said. "I believe it could involve further cuts in the number of deployed warheads. I believe we do need the verification provisions. But I think it ought to be an agreement that is shorter, simpler and easier to adjust to real-world conditions than most of the strategic arms agreements that we've seen over the last 40 years."

Both presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, advocate negotiating further reductions with Russia.

Gates offered a number of reasons why the United States should maintain its nuclear arsenal, including the assertion that by providing an umbrella of protection for allies like Japan and South Korea, it removes a reason for those countries to feel the need to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Echoing concerns by some congressional Republicans, Gates said there are reasons to worry about the U.S. arsenal.

"Let me first say very clearly that our weapons are safe, secure and reliable," Gates said. "The problem is the long-term prognosis which I would characterize as bleak." He noted that the United States has not designed a new nuclear weapon since the 1980s and has not built a new one since 1992.

In his most extensive remarks on nuclear weapons since he became Pentagon chief nearly two years ago, Gates spelled out in detail his views on why nuclear weapons play a vital role in the broader U.S. defense strategy. And he called for urgent action to reverse a decline in focus on nuclear issues.

"Currently the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead," he said. "To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program."

The Gates remarks come amid a growing debate in national security circles over whether and how the United States should take the lead in pushing for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

Gates made clear he believes that such a goal, while reasonable, cannot be realized for many years.

"We must take steps to transform from an aging Cold War nuclear weapons complex that is too large and expensive to a smaller, less costly but modern enterprise that can meet our nation's nuclear security needs for the future," Gates said.

He urged Congress to drop its opposition to a long-stymied administration proposal to develop a design for a more secure nuclear warhead, saying it could be done without actual underground nuclear testing.

"The program would reinvigorate and rebuild our infrastructure and expertise," Gates said.

Asked about Iran by a member of his audience, Gates said he believed that the international community would not mind Iran having a nuclear program if it were devoted to civilian power generation and if Tehran had verifiably forsworn any ambition to develop nuclear weapons.

Gates said he believes it is not too late to persuade Iran to give up on nuclear arms.

"I think the pressures from the international community and ... economic pressures that caused them difficulty at home still have promise in terms of getting them to make a policy decision to go in another direction," he said. "And it probably involves also some kind of assurances with respect to security."

source: 1nov2008