Take a Lesson from Paul Nitze: Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Image by Alex Shuper.
Melvin A. Goodman, national security columnist for Counterpunch.org, presents a fine review of the absurdities today’s U.S. nuclear weapons production. (“A Looming Nuclear Catastrophe,” Aug. 30). The Pentagon’s new nuclear weapons only enlarge the genocidal and self-destructive arsenal already deployed on U.S. bombers, submarines, ICBMs, and in NATO bunkers at six European air bases.
For weapons contractors, Congress, the White House, and the military to point to the nuclear arsenals of other countries as reasons for increasing U.S. over-kill capacity, is, as Goodman points out, the height of “strategic madness.”
Goodman correctly targets the late Paul H. Nitze as one of the best-known advocates of nuclear “escalation dominance” in “Nukespeak.” Nitze was a life-long military hawk and nuclear threat strategist, an anti-Soviet propagandist, and a founder of the Committee on the Present Danger ⸺ a group once known as “the most effective organ of Cold War revivalism.” But Goodman’s analysis missed the chance to bolster his analysis with the fact that after retiring Nitze rejected decades of pro-nuclear advocacy by publicly abandoning the fundamental basis of nuclear deterrence theory ⸺ namely, that it is practical and rational to threaten massive nuclear retaliation in response to a nuclear attack — and calling for elimination of the U.S. arsenal regardless of what other countries do.
In his October 28, 1999 op/ed in The New York Times, titled “A Threat Mostly to Ourselves,” Nitze wrote:
“I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them … adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even if retaliation for their prior use against us.”
Nitze, a former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, noted that the destructiveness of “conventional” weapons make nuclear warheads redundant and unnecessary. Nitze wrote:
“In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal.”
Recent history illustrates Nitze’s point in spades, as conventional U.S. bombs, missiles, and troops: killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, and again in the 2003 Iraq War (“100,000 Iraqis killed since U.S. invasion, analysis says,” Mpls Star Tribune, Oct. 29, 2004, -&- “Greenpeace Count Puts Dead From War in Gulf at 200,000,” New York Times, May 30, 1991); leveled Afghanistan’s major cities beginning in 2001; and, turned Syria’s cities into smoking ruins after first attacking ISIS then Syrian government forces. The Pentagon says that “Operation Inherent Resolve” conducted 13,331 airstrikes in Iraq and 11,235 airstrikes in Syria by August 9, 2017. No nukes required.
The unimaginably expensive maintenance, refurbishment, and expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a hugely profitable jobs program which is defended and protected by Congressional representatives from coast to coast, because weapons contracts in one’s district mean votes. But the weapons themselves are just for show. Our nuclear weapons “theater” is the government’s perpetual public threat to conduct nuclear attacks, a permanent bomb threat known as “credible deterrence.” This nuclear terror is used by the government to claim that our conventional wars of mass destruction are “measured,” “surgical,” “limited,” and “moderate” — because the shooters didn’t resort to nuclear attacks.
The 30-year $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons rebuild program ⸺ launched in 2014 by Barack Obama and Joe Biden ⸺ must be protested and resisted on economic and environmental grounds, but the absurdity and self-deception of deterrence theory itself must be denounced and abandoned, the way Paul Nitze did, in order to finally end the nightmare and colossal waste of fielding a nuclear arsenal.
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