"MILITARY LEADERS FOR THE ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS"

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.), Pres., Center for Defense Information

HOST: Vice Admiral John Shanahan (USN, Ret.) Director, Center for Defense Information

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH: David T. Johnson

DIRECTOR of TELEVISION: Mark Sugg

PRODUCERS: Glenn Baker

Stephen Sapienza

PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER: Kathryn R. Schultz

SEGMENT PRODUCER: Glenn Baker

NARRATOR: Kathryn R. Schultz

VIDEO GRAPHICS: Adam Luther

ORIGINATION: Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NO.: 1049

INITIAL BROADCAST: 17 August 1997

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"

(Center for Defense Information).

Videotapes also available.

"MILITARY LEADERS for the ABOLITION of NUCLEAR WEAPONS"

features comments from:

GEN LEE BUTLER Former Commander, Strategic Command (USAF, Ret.)

at National Press Club, 4 December 1996

ADM EUGENE CARROLL (USN, Ret.) Deputy Director, Center for Defense

Information

ADM Sir JAMES EBERLE British Royal Navy (Ret.)

GEN ANDREW GOODPASTER (USA, Ret.), Former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.), Director, Center for Defense Information

with additional comments from:

President BILL CLINTON, Address to United Nations General Assembly, 24 September 1996

President JOHN KENNEDY

GEN COLIN POWELL (USA, Ret.), Harvard University, 10 June 1993

President RONALD REAGAN, 22 November 1982

WALTER SLOCOMBE, Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy

President HARRY S TRUMAN, August 1945

GEN ANDREW GOODPASTER (USA, Ret.), at the National Press

Club, December 1996:

We as senior military officers have seen firsthand for many years the role of nuclear weapons, as well as the risks they involve.

ADM EUGENE CARROLL (USN, Ret.): You cannot justify fighting with weapons which are totally indiscriminate, the effects cannot be contained or controlled. You simply destroy with them. Everything that you might fight over is destroyed in the process.

GEN GOODPASTER: There is much now to be gained by reducing their numbers and their readiness, meanwhile exploring the feasibility of their ultimate complete elimination.

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

NARRATOR: In July 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested. Less than a month later, two atomic bombs had been dropped, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

President HARRY S TRUMAN, August 1945:

"Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemy, and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes."

NARRATOR: The bomb and later a wide variety of nuclear weapons found their place in the armed forces.

ANNOUNCER (Government film):

"Today, wherever you are, whatever you do, wherever you may go, you are a part of atomic warfare. It involves you personally in laboratories and in the field, in little known places and ways. Units of the defense establishment of the United States are learning to work with atomic weapons."

NARRATOR: It was argued that nuclear weapons were needed to deter and possibly to defeat the Soviet Union.

President JOHN F. KENNEDY:

"In view of the Soviet action, it will be the policy of the United States to proceed in developing nuclear weapons to maintain this superior capability for the defense of the free world against any aggressor."

NARRATOR: Over four decades, the United States and Soviet Union engaged in a costly and dangerous arms race. Thousands of nuclear weapons were exploded in tests, poisoning the land and ourselves. The specter of nuclear war trespassed on the activities of daily life.

President KENNEDY:

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness."

NARRATOR: Then the impossible happened. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down and with it the ramparts of communism.

GEN GOODPASTER: There was a great event that occurred late in the 1980s in Europe, and that was the end of the Cold War. That just completely changed the security environment, the whole security picture. Now the problems of security are not in the past, but they have to be rethought in light of what one very good analyst has called "the dawn of peace in Europe."

NARRATOR: The dissolution of the Soviet Union had military leaders like GEN Andrew Goodpaster, former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, rethinking the role and need for nuclear weapons.

GEN GOODPASTER: As Eisenhower used to say, if you spend more than you need to spend on your security, you're not strengthening it, you in fact are weakening it. And the same is true of nuclear weapons. If we have more than we need for that stable security, then we're not adding to security, we are creating a situation of greater potential destructive danger to the United States.

NARRATOR: In December 1996, GEN Goodpaster and GEN George Lee Butler went public with their call for working toward a world free of all nuclear weapons.

GEN LEE BUTLER: I chose this forum to make my most direct public case for elimination as the goal to be pursued with all deliberate speed.

NARRATOR: As commander of US Strategic Command, all long-range US nuclear weapons were under GEN Butler's authority.

GEN BUTLER (at National Press Club, 6 December 1996):

I'm here today because I feel the weight of a special obligation in these matters, a responsibility born of unique experience. Over the last 27 years of my military career, I was embroiled in every aspect of American nuclear policymaking and force structuring, from the highest councils of government, to military command centers; from the negotiating table to the cramped bomber cockpits and the confines of ballistic missile silos and submarines.

I came away from that experience deeply troubled by what I now see as the burden of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals. The increasingly tangled web of policy and strategy as the number of weapons and delivery systems multiply, the staggering costs, the relentless pressures of advancing technology, the grotesquely destructive war plans, the daily operational risks and the constant prospect of a crisis that would hold the fate of entire societies in the balance.

Seen from this perspective, it should not be surprising that no one could have been more relieved than was I by the dramatic end of the Cold War and the promise of reprieve from its acute tensions and threats. The democratization of Russia, the reshaping of Central Europe -- I never imagined that in my lifetime, much less during my military service, such extraordinary events might transpire. Most important, most important, I could see for the first time the prospect of restoring a world free of the apocalyptic threat of nuclear weapons.

Over time, that shimmering hope gave way to a judgment which has now become a deeply held conviction: That a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: Many, however, misunderstood the call of the generals.

Under-Secretary of Defense WALTER SLOCOMBE (testimony before Congressional committee, February 1997):

"Whatever would be desirable, there is in fact no reasonable prospect that all the declared and de facto nuclear powers will agree in the near term to give up all their nuclear weapons. And as long as one such state refuses to do so, it will be necessary for us to retain a nuclear force of our own."

NARRATOR: Walter Slocombe is Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. He testified to a Senate subcommittee two months after the generals' call for working toward elimination.

Secretary SLOCOMBE (testimony at Congressional hearing):

"It is our conclusion that it would be irresponsible to dismantle the well-established and much-reduced system of nuclear deterrence before new and reliable systems, substitute systems for preserving stability are in place."

NARRATOR: But Generals Goodpaster and Butler were not calling for unilateral disarmament. On the contrary.

GEN GOODPASTER: We certainly would not get rid of all of our as long as the possibility exists that somebody else hostile to us could have them.

NARRATOR: Rather than unilateral disarmament, these retired military officers called for a tangible commitment to the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and urged the administration to take action.

GEN GOODPASTER (in speech at National Press Club): We believe the United States should take the necessary steps to align its nuclear weapons policy to match the diminished role and utility of these weapons, and the continued risks that they involve.

NARRATOR: Some positive steps have been taken since the end of the Cold War. Under President Clinton, the United States secured the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, helped achieve the denuclearization of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, and realized Kennedy's dream of completing a treaty banning all nuclear explosive tests.

President BILL CLINTON (at the United Nations, 24 Sept '97):

"This Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will help to prevent the nuclear powers from developing more advanced and more dangerous weapons. It will limit the ability of other states to acquire such devices themselves. It points us toward a century in which the roles and risks of nuclear weapons can be further reduced, and ultimately, eliminated."

NARRATOR: At the same time, however, President Clinton has endorsed spending $61 billion over the next 14 years to find new ways to maintain the existing arsenal and potentially to design new nuclear warheads. At more than $4 billion a year, this will exceed the amount spent on nuclear weapons research and development during the 1950s and 1970s.

Critics have pointed out that, in effect, nuclear testing keeps going and going and going...

But the numbers of nuclear weapons have been coming down, from a Cold War high of more than 70,000 to some-36,000 weapons today. That number is expected to shrink further, to about 21,000 weapons if the Russians ratify and both Russia and the United States fully implement the START II Treaty. And Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have agreed on the basic framework of a START III Treaty, which may further cut worldwide arsenals. The remaining weapons, however, would still be more than enough to destroy civilization as we know it several times over.

While these steps should be applauded, GEN Butler wonders why the US is just nibbling at the edges.

GEN BUTLER (National Press Club speech): There is a much larger issue which now confronts the nuclear powers and engages the vital interests of every nation. Whether the world is better served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear weapons reductions toward some indeterminate end point or by an unqualified commitment on the part of the nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of eliminating these arsenals in their entirety.

NARRATOR: Generals Goodpaster and Butler were not alone in their call. Also in December 1996, some 60 retired generals and admirals from around the world issued a statement, urging the nuclear powers to take a variety of steps aimed at the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, a former nuclear war planner, was among the signatories.

ADM EUGENE CARROLL (USN, Ret.): My aversion to nuclear weapons began in 1955 when the Navy trained me as a nuclear weapons delivery pilot, and I found out what they were and how they worked and what they did. Up until then, I was like everybody else: They must be good. They're keeping the peace.

When I was finally assigned a target in Central Europe that had marginal military value, but I was supposed to destroy that target -- and at times, I used to stand watch on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with that weapon loaded on the airplane, ready to go to war in five minutes. If I had done that, if I had carried out the mission that I'd planned, I would have killed 600,000 people to destroy one small supply depot.

NARRATOR: Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan also signed the International Admirals and Generals Letter. During his 35-year Navy career, Admiral Shanahan had numerous nuclear weapons under his command.

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): The destroyers, the nuclear-capable destroyers that I was on had surface-to-air nuclear missiles. I couldn't imagine ever firing one of them, or the ASROC, the nuclear torpedo.

NARRATOR of ASROC film:

"Surface ASROC missiles with nuclear warheads were taken aboard the designated firing ship, the destroyer Agerholm and her backup, the destroyer Richard B. Anderson. Intensive preparations stressed the most advanced safety and protective measures. The rocket-propelled ASROC headed toward target. Twenty-seven seconds later, the warhead splashed...and penetrated to its sub depth. At this point, the surface fuse completed the firing cycle and the burst exploded skyward."

ADM SHANAHAN: I saw no practical use for the kinds of nuclear weapons that I had dealt with throughout my career, and they've removed them all now. They're no longer in existence. I couldn't imagine firing an ASROC with a nuclear warhead on it and try to get out of the way of the fallout of my own ship, but they said it was possible.

NARRATOR: Admiral Sir James Eberle served as commander of NATO Channel Command and, as a high-ranking officer in the British Royal Navy, was involved in British nuclear policy and planning.

ADM Sir JAMES EBERLE (Ret.): In the whole of my military career, in exercises and so on, I never found a single occasion when, in terms of military judgment, I wanted to use them, because we were always facing a foe who also had nuclear weapons. I then had to ask myself, if I am in a situation now and I think that the best way of getting out of it is to use nuclear weapons, I must then assume that the enemy will use nuclear weapons back. If he uses nuclear weapons back, am I better off or am I worse off? Because unless I could answer that with confidence that I shall then be better off, it's a dumb thing to use them.

NARRATOR: Does that mean that the United States can or should give up all of its nuclear weapons? No. Nuclear weapons still have some value in the post-Cold War world.

GEN GOODPASTER: The only value they have now is to prevent their use by others.

NARRATOR: Deterrence has long been a fundamental part of US nuclear policy.

President RONALD REAGAN (22 November 1982):

"What do we mean when we speak of nuclear deterrence? Basically, it's a matter of others knowing that starting a conflict would be more costly to them than anything they might hope to gain."

NARRATOR: As long as anyone else has large numbers of nuclear weapons, the United States will need some nuclear weapons for deterrence.

GEN GOODPASTER: There's only one purpose that our nuclear weapons really serve for us now, and that's to assure that nobody else uses nuclear weapons against us or our allies. And that can be done at any level where we are not at a severe disadvantage. So, we can go on down, as I put it, to the lowest verifiable level consistent with stable security, and that, to my mind, would be a 100 to 200. But that would have to be a number also for the British, and the Chinese, and the French, in addition to the Russians and ourselves.

NARRATOR: But instead of working toward the lowest verifiable level, the Pentagon insists that it needs to maintain a large number of nuclear weapons in reserve as a "hedge" against Russia.

Secretary SLOCOMBE (testimony at Congressional hearing):

"With respect to Russia, our nuclear policy is what Secretary Perry called 'lead and hedge.' Leading to further reductions and increased weapons safety and improved relations, and hedging against the possibility of reversal of reform in Russia."

NARRATOR: As others are quick to point out, should there be a "reversal of reform in Russia," Americans would be far safer if there were fewer nuclear weapons in Russia, not more nuclear weapons in the United States.

GEN GOODPASTER: As President Eisenhower often said, nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United States of America. So, if we can get rid of them or get rid of most of them, we should do that.

ADM CARROLL: The sooner we get rid of nuclear weapons, totally, completely, the safer the world community and the future for our children and grandchildren will be.

NARRATOR: GEN Colin Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed similar sentiments in a speech at Harvard University in 1993.

GEN COLIN POWELL:

"And today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place."

NARRATOR: There are serious concerns about eliminating nuclear weapons, prime among them the ability to ensure that no one cheats. However, for ADM Eberle, these risks pale in comparison to the dangers of keeping nuclear weapons.

ADM EBERLE: There are risks attached to total nuclear disarmament, but I have come to the view that those risks are lesser risks than maintaining the vast stocks of nuclear weapons, which despite the reductions, which are highly welcome, that we have made so far.

INTERVIEWER: What are the risks of retaining nuclear weapons?

ADM EBERLE: That they should be used. Not by responsible governments, that they are essentially the risks of proliferation. And it's always been a concern of mine that if we said, as we have, that it is a contribution to stability for the Brits, for the United States, etc. to have nuclear weapons, why have we argued that nobody else could do the same?

NARRATOR: The United States pledged itself to the goal of nuclear abolition when it signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. When the treaty was indefinitely extended in 1995, all five nuclear weapons states reaffirmed their commitment to the "determined pursuit...of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons."

ADM SHANAHAN: When we signed that treaty, we took on an obligation, a legal and moral obligation to work towards eliminating nuclear weapons from this planet, and we aren't doing that.

NARRATOR: The International Court of Justice agrees. In July 1996, the Court unanimously ruled that "there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control." If the nuclear weapons states fail to keep this obligation, other nations may reassess their commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Mexico has already threatened to do so.

ADM SHANAHAN: Countries who have signed on that are currently non-nuclear and have signed the agreement will say, well, there obviously must be some reason to have nuclear weapons. The United States is not prepared to give up on theirs, Russia probably won't either under those circumstances. So, therefore, they will attempt to acquire, because they think it's something that's needed to be a player in the world.

NARRATOR: But won't the United States need nuclear weapons to deal with a nation that might acquire a handful of them?

ADM CARROLL: I call the idea that some rogue nation is going to have four weapons and threaten us the Kevorkian strategy: It guarantees the death of the patient. No, we are not at risk by getting rid of nuclear weapons, provided we do it in an orderly and planned way, with complete confidence that this is a process that will end up in no weapons in anybody's hands, but we'll be safer every step of the way.

NARRATOR: Threats posed by a non-nuclear nation, or even a nation which may have only a few nuclear weapons, could best be countered using conventional weapons.

ADM SHANAHAN: With the advances in technology with conventional weapons, we can -- as GEN Powell said, he could do just as much damage with the conventional weapons at his disposal as he could with nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: Given the dramatic changes in the world and the overwhelming superiority of US conventional forces, is a world without nuclear weapons feasible or is it merely a utopian dream?

GEN BUTLER: I offer in reply that for me, the utopian dream was ending the Cold War. Standing down nuclear arsenals requires only a fraction of the ingenuity and resources as were devoted to their creation.

ADM CARROLL: We're not smart enough to know when and how it will be possible to get rid of all nuclear weapons. We just know that it must happen for the safety of the world and that we could get started on steps which will lead us to that goal sometime in the future.

NARRATOR: ADM Shanahan suggests taking a phased approach, always with the elimination of nuclear weapons as the goal.

ADM SHANAHAN: You can identify along the road a series of tall poles, if you will, that you have to get over one at a time. And as you get over them, you go on to the next one. But you have to have that kind of a plan. And when you get to a tall pole that you can't get over, you stop and work on it and work on it, and eventually you'll get over it.

NARRATOR: ADM Shanahan suggests that de-alerting be the first step.

ADM SHANAHAN: I want to de-alert nuclear weapons. By that, I mean separate the warhead from the missile delivery system or from the bomber, store them someplace, and we could have on-site verification.

NARRATOR: We've heard from President Clinton that:

President CLINTON, State of the Union Message:

"For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there is not a single Russian missile pointed at America's children."

NARRATOR: However, these weapons could be retargeted within a matter of minutes.

ADM EBERLE: There has been a certain amount of detargeting now, but I mean whether your missile is targeted or not is actually a matter of what settings you put on a dial, in practical terms; it doesn't mean very much. But if we start talking about taking warheads off missiles, so they're not there at high readiness, then we are taking, in my view, important steps towards an eventual elimination. That is the path that I would like to see us go.

NARRATOR: Deeper cuts in the numbers of nuclear weapons both deployed and stored are also needed. US-Russian bilateral steps, including Russian ratification of the START II Treaty and negotiation of a follow-on START III Treaty, should be followed by negotiations among all the nuclear weapons states to the lowest levels possible. GEN Goodpaster believes that we can safely reduce to 100 to 200 nuclear weapons.

GEN GOODPASTER: That gives us, in my mind, the security assurance that we need against anybody using nuclear weapons against us. And we should remember that 100 to 200 weapons -- that sounds like a small number when it's compared to 30,000, but it's a big number when it's compared to Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Chernobyl. And we know from those what the extent of damage of just a few of these enormously powerful weapons could be.

NARRATOR: There are other related hurdles that must be overcome.

ADM SHANAHAN: Farther down, you would have the ability to take the warheads, store them either in internationally-controlled safe storage areas or in your own with verification.

NARRATOR: Nuclear or fissile materials which can be used to make warheads must also be accounted for and tightly guarded. Major changes in the global neighborhood are also necessary.

ADM EBERLE: The concomitant really of meaningful progress has to be growing confidence of a wider stability in international affairs, but I believe that there are hopeful signs. And if we can keep these steps producing greater confidence, producing more openness in security affairs, in giving a greater role to international organizations, then I believe that we can follow that, and that has got to happen first. And we can follow that by looking towards the total elimination of what has been this ghastly nuclear holocaust.

NARRATOR: As the nation that introduced nuclear weapons to the world, the United States now has an obligation to lead the world toward a future free from these weapons of unparalleled destruction.

GEN BUTLER, at the National Press Club:

We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace. The price already paid is too dear. The risks run too great. This task is daunting, but we cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again.

NARRATOR: Special funding for this program was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

[End of broadcast.]

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"