BASIC RESEARCH REPORT

A Risk Reduction Strategy for NATO

Letter from Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr., to
NATO Heads of Government

November 2, 1998

Dear Prime Minister:

It is of considerable importance that the nuclear strategy of NATO be consistent with the nonproliferation priorities of its member states which are all states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). NATO is expected to reaffirm its existing nuclear strategy this December prior to formal approval at a NATO summit in Washington next April. Reaffirmation of the old Cold War era strategy without revision would have a negative impact on the international non-proliferation regime.

During 1994 and 1995, I led a global diplomatic effort on behalf of the U.S. Government to achieve the indefinite extension of the NPT. I traveled to approximately forty capitals and consulted personally with representatives of over one hundred of the states parties to the Treaty. During this process I became acutely aware of the concerns of many states parties with regard to the future viability of the Treaty.

I believe that the NPT regime will be in grave jeopardy if significant progress is not made toward the Article VI disarmament obligations by the five nuclear weapon states parties by the 2000 Review Conference. Despite this, it seems unlikely at this time that the nuclear weapon states parties will make such progress consistent with Article VI and the Principles and Objectives Document adopted at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference before the 2000 Conference. Even the START process, which is, alone, inadequate to meet the concerns of the non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT, appears bogged down at present with no immediate hope of major progress. Furthermore, some are arguing that India and Pakistan should be accepted as nuclear weapon states; an acquiescence that would devastate the NPT regime. The importance of the NPT was clear to all when it was extended indefinitely, but if the circumstances described above do not improve over time, influential states such as Indonesia, Egypt, and Japan may begin to question the Treaty's effectiveness as an instrument of their security policy.

The policy choices that NATO makes regarding the deployment and conditions of prospective use for nuclear weapons will increasingly impact the health of the NPT regime. If NATO members continue to support policies that assign a high political value to nuclear weapons, for instance as an essential bulwark of Alliance cohesion, the cost in terms of the effectiveness of global nonproliferation efforts will be significant. Nuclear weapons are irrelevant to the vast majority of the threats that NATO faces today; their only utility is to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others. Nuclear proliferation, however, would pose a significant security threat to the Alliance as a whole as well as to individual members. Presently, NATO policies favoring reliance on nuclear weapons and attaching a high political value to these weapons benefit the Alliance very little, but the cost of these policies is becoming very high in terms of the non-proliferation efforts they impede.

I strongly recommend that the strategy review to be undertaken at the upcoming NATO Ministerial account for the importance of the NPT regime to Alliance security. Specific Alliance contributions to the implementation of the Principles and Objectives on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament agreed to at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference should include:

NATO should no longer refer to nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO as "essential political and military link between the European and the North American members of the Alliance."¹ Attaching a high political value to nuclear weapons is inconsistent with the legal obligations of all NATO member states under the NPT and NATO's stated objectives regarding the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and is therefore detrimental to the security of NATO and its members.
NATO should announce that, as a matter of Alliance policy, it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
NATO should support transfer of nuclear weapons from operational status to storage with the intention of looking toward the eventual elimination of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.
NATO should announce a new High Level Task Force of the North Atlantic Council to study the future role of nuclear weapons in Europe with the intention of identifying areas in which Alliance policy could promote effective non-proliferation, through arms control as well as current counter-proliferation measures.
NATO should announce that the nuclear sharing arrangements developed in the late 1960s are no longer necessary or appropriate. The plans and procedures for transferring U.S. nuclear weapons to NATO Allies in time of war are of dubious legality with respect to Articles I and II of the NPT and have been criticized by South Africa and others as inconsistent with the objectives of the NPT.

Implementation of measures such as those described above would constitute an important contribution by the Alliance to the continued viability of the NPT regime and would thus support Alliance security and stated policy objectives. In light of new threats and changing economic and political conditions, these steps would generate a substantial non-proliferation benefit, thereby enhancing the security of NATO and its members. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this letter or would like to discuss the relationship between nuclear weapons policy and non-proliferation further.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr.

¹ The Alliance's New Strategic Concept, Art. 55

Appendix B:
Letter from Lee Butler, General, USAF (Retired) to
NATO Defense Ministers

10 December 1998

Dear Defense Minister,

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s suggestion that NATO revise its nuclear doctrine is most welcome. As you discuss these matters with your colleagues it may be that my own experience in thinking through this question as the Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the U. S. armed forces during the Gulf war might be helpful. I was equally engaged in the matter of prospective nuclear response to attack by WMD during my tenure as Commander-in-Chief of U. S. Strategic Command during the period 1991 to 1994.

As you are keenly aware, the Gulf War presented us with the very real possibility of confronting such an attack by the forces of Iraq. We went through the exercise of imagining how it might unfold and examining a variety of response options. My personal conclusion was that under any likely attack scenario, a nuclear reply by the United States and its allies was simply out of the question.

First, from a purely military perspective, the coalition forces had the conventional capability to impose any desired war termination objectives on Iraq, to include unconditional surrender and occupation. For a variety of reasons, we elected not to go to that extreme but it was clearly an option in the face of a WMD attack.

Second, given our conventional superiority, and the nature of the war zone, the use of nuclear weapons simply made no tactical nor strategic sense. General Powell noted in his memoirs that several weapons would have been required to mount any sort of effective campaign against military targets, an option that Secretary Cheney immediately rejected - and understandably so. Further, whatever the immediate battlefield effects, the problems of radioactive fall-out carrying over into friendly forces or surrounding countries were unfathomable.

Third, the larger political issues were insurmountable. What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn? How could we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a single demented leader who holds his own country hostage? Moreover, the consequences for the nonproliferation regime would have been severe. By joining our enemy in shattering the tradition of non-use that had held for 45 years, we would have destroyed U.S. credibility as leader of the campaign against nuclear proliferation; indeed, we would likely have emboldened a whole now array of nuclear aspirants.

In short, in a singular act we would have martyred our principal foe, alienated our friends, destroyed the coalition so painstakingly constructed, given comfort to the non-declared nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons covertly.

In the end, we tried to have it both ways, privately ruling out a nuclear reply while maintaining an ambiguous declaratory policy. The infamous and widely misre-presented letter from Secretary Baker to Baghdad was ill-advised; in fact, Iraq violated with impunity one of its cardinal prohibitions by torching Kuwait’s oil fields.

When I left my J-5 post in Washington and took up this issue as CINCSTRAT, I found all of the foregoing cautions to be relevant across a wide spectrum of prospective targets in a variety of so-called rogue nations. I ultimately concluded that whatever the utility of a First Use policy during the Cold War, it is entirely inappropriate to the new global security environment; worse, it is counterproduc-tive to the goal of nonproliferation and antithetical to the values of democratic societies.

Please forgive this rather abrupt intrusion into your deliberations. Obviously, I would not take such a liberty if I did not believe it was warranted by the import and the urgency of the issue.

Warm regards,

Lee Butler

General, USAF (Retired)

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