Bush's New Nuclear Push

By MARK THOMPSON

Although President Bush spends endless hours trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, his Administration isn't above creating a few itself. The Pentagon is hard at work pushing to develop the first new class of U.S. nukes since the end of the cold war. Two plans are on the table: retooling existing warheads into atomic sledgehammers capable of destroying bunkers under 1,000 feet of rock, and designing new mini-size nukes ideal for targeting stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. Congress banned work on mini-nukes for the past decade out of fear that smaller nuclear weapons might be more likely to be used. But the Bush Administration, citing the jump in what it calls hard and deeply buried targets (HDBTs) has persuaded the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to lift the prohibition. Both houses could vote on the measure as early as this week when they take up next year's military budget. The Pentagon has included $21 million for the two new programs as well as $25 million to jump-start nuclear tests, if the Administration sees fit.

Why does the U.S. need new nukes? The Administration argues that the current arsenal consists largely of mammoth city blasters that can't burrow underground where U.S. officials believe nations such as Iran and North Korea are assembling weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, Pentagon officials say, this arsenal is no longer an effective deterrent. Washington's enemies, they say, calculate that the U.S. won't use its existing nuclear weapons because of the widespread carnage they would cause.

But the new plans have their own detractors, including nuclear scientist and Pentagon adviser Sidney Drell, who says even a tiny 1-kiloton weapon exploding 50 ft. deep in rock would spew radioactivity across a wide swath of the planet. Arms-control advocates worry that possessing smaller and more precise nuclear weapons would scuttle efforts to stop worldwide proliferation. Said Senator Dianne Feinstein last week: "This Administration seems to be moving toward a military posture in which nuclear weapons are considered just like other weapons." --By Mark Thompson