The Obama administration’s recent Nuclear Posture Review has prompted something of an uproar, particularly among neoconservatives. Controversy has centered on one aspect of the review — its narrowing of the circumstances under which the United States might use nuclear weapons. This is the pertinent language from the text:
“The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer’s response echoes many on the Right:
“Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)
“However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.
“This is quite insane. It’s like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.”
Krauthammer may not be “quite insane.” But he is being very silly. Daniel Larison — a conservative but very much outside the movement mainstream — puts it nicely:
“Yes, I’d say that full-scale conventional bombardment and the wreckage of major cities with air strikes and shelling is comparable to community service, wouldn’t you? I often associate carpet bombing and working at a soup kitchen. There’s nothing ‘loopy’ or ‘bizarre’ about that comparison, is there?”
The truth of the matter is that the United States possesses the conventional military capacity to cause immense damage in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack. We can bomb cities. We can destroy power plants, telecommunication centers, dams and other infrastructure. We can sink ships and shoot down aircraft. We can, in short, kill lots and lots and lots of people. (Remember: inflicting mass casualties is what massive retaliation is all about.) One blogger at the Federation of American Scientists points out that the “bullets, bombs, and other conventional weapons” which Krauthammer dismisses caused the deaths of countless millions in World War II.
How big a deal is the Nuclear Posture Review anyway? Foreign policy expert Stephen Walt, for one, doesn’t think it makes much of difference. Nothing in the review stops the president from using — or threatening to use — nuclear weapons if he or she believes circumstances warrant it.
Is the review largely a PR effort, as Walt suggests? Perhaps. But it is hardly the catastrophe that Krauthammer and others like him describe.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.