After a year in office the Bush administration has completed the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) mandated by Congress in the fall of 2000. The NPR establishes the broad outline of Pentagon planning for U.S. nuclear strategy, force levels and infrastructure for the next 10 years and beyond. It also endorses significant revisions to the nuclear war planning process to enhance its flexibility and responsiveness, which would allow the Pentagon to generate new nuclear attack plans and have them approved quickly in a crisis.

The administration has provided the public with a cursory view of the NPR, but the entire report remains secret. The NPR has received little attention from the news media and even less from analysts. This is unfortunate. The logic and assumptions underlying the administration's hostility to arms control, and its infatuation with nuclear weapons, deserve vigorous public scrutiny and debate. Not since the resurgence of the Cold War in Ronald Reagan's first term has there been such an emphasis on nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy. Behind the administration's rhetorical mask of post Cold War restraint lie expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them, within a so-called "New Triad" of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defenses and nuclear weapons infrastructure.

NRDC has learned from a variety of sources more about the likely implications of this review for the evolution of the U.S. nuclear posture. Words and phrases in quotation marks are said to be from the NPR or the Department of Defense (DOD) special briefing on the NPR:

Nuclear Weapons Forever?

• The Bush administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces at least for the next 50 years. Starting from this premise it is planning an extensive and expensive series of programs to sustain and modernize the existing force and to begin studies for a new ICBM to be operational in 2020, a new SLBM and SSBN in 2030, and a new heavy bomber in 2040, as well as new warheads for all of them. Nuclear weapons will continue to play a "critical role" because they possess "unique properties" that provide "credible military options" for holding at risk "a wide range of target types" important to a potential adversary's threatened use of "weapons of mass destruction" or "large-scale conventional military force."
  
  
• The NPR uses terminology from the September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, which states the purpose of possessing nuclear weapons is fourfold: to "assure allies and friends," "dissuade competitors," "deter aggressors" and "defeat enemies."
  
  
• The Bush administration will not eliminate the relatively inflexible nuclear "counterforce" Major Attack Options that characterized the Cold War nuclear planning process, despite the administration's pronouncements about being in a post-Cold War world. Instead, the administration will scale the attack options to the size required to preempt opposing threats, and supplement them by an "adaptive planning" process that anticipates a range of nuclear contingencies and is flexible enough to respond quickly where and when a crisis occurs.
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The Numbers Game

• The United States is "adjusting its immediate nuclear force requirements" for "operationally deployed forces" downward, from 8,000 warheads today to 3,800 in 2007, in recognition of the changed relationship with Russia, but "Russia's nuclear forces and programs remain a concern." Barring unforeseen adverse developments, the NPR's eventual "goal" is to reach the level of 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed weapons" in 2012.
  
  
• Over the next 10 years, the Bush administration's plans call for the United States to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapon components that is roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed weapons." This is an accounting system worthy of Enron. The operationally deployed weapons are only the visible portion of a huge, hidden arsenal. To the "accountable" tally of 2,200 one must add the following:
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	~240 missile warheads on the two Trident submarines in overhaul at any given time;
+	~1,350 strategic missile and bomber warheads in the "responsive force";
+	~800 "nonstrategic" bombs assigned to US/NATO "dual-capable" aircraft;
+	~320 "nonstrategic" sea-launched cruise missile warheads in the "responsive force;"
+	~160 "spare" strategic and non-strategic warheads;
+	~4,900 intact warheads in the "inactive reserve" stockpile;
=	~7,800 intact warheads;
+	~5,000 stored plutonium "primary" and HEU "secondary" components that could be reassembled into weapons

In other words, the Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000. ...

The Nuclear Complex and Infrastructure

• The administration plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear infrastructure with the capacity to: upgrade existing systems, "surge" production of weapons, and develop and field "entirely new systems." All of this is designed to "discourage" other countries from "competing militarily with the United States."
  
  
• The administration believes that the current arsenal -- a subset of what was in place at the end of the Cold War -- is not what is needed for the future. That arsenal was developed and deployed mainly to deter the former Soviet Union and to carry out the "Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)." In the administration's view, significantly modified and quite possibly new nuclear warheads will be required to accomplish new military missions, and thus the NPR calls for a revitalized nuclear weapon complex that could, if directed, design, develop, manufacture and certify new warheads. The administration believes that the development of this arsenal must begin now because it will take much longer than a decade to complete. This arsenal would have the capability to target and destroy mobile and re-locatable targets and hard and deeply buried targets.
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Spinning the Nuclear Posture Review While Violating U.S. Treaty Commitments

Administration officials have sought to cast the NPR as a watershed step in breaking with the Cold War past. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated in the publicly released foreword:

First and foremost, the Nuclear Posture Review puts the Cold War practices related to planning for strategic forces behind us.. As a result of this review, the U.S. will no longer plan, size or sustain its forces as Russia presented merely a smaller version of the threat posed by the former Soviet Union.

In fact, a fully informed analysis of the NPR suggests that far more has been retained than discarded from the Cold War's doctrine and practice regarding nuclear weapons, and the break is not nearly as clean as suggested.

Moreover, a strong case can be made that the nuclear weapons policies and programs laid out in the NPR effectively preclude further U.S. "good faith" participation in international negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Good faith participation in such negotiations, leading to the achievement of "effective measures" (such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) "relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament," is a legal and political obligation of all parties under Article VI of the nearly universal nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that entered into force in 1970. The Bush administration posture of avoiding further binding legal constraints on the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while pursuing the reinvigoration of the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and the development of new nuclear weapons, will be viewed by many nations as a blatant breach of the "good faith" negotiating standard under the treaty, and tantamount to a U.S. "breakout" from the NPT.
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For complete text of press release, please visit:

http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020213a.asp