[From the Daytona Beach News Journal.]
Editor's note: At Friday's World Affairs in the Millennium, sponsored by the
News-Journal, seven speakers gave an overview of international affairs,
post-Sept. 11. This is an adaptation of Bruce Blair's speech. See Page 3 for what
others had to say.
Not long ago, I went to the command headquarters in Omaha that controls all of
America's strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. By chance, I
encountered a flight crew that had just returned from a secret mission flying a spy
plane around the borders of a country considered threatening to American
interests.
Here is a quiz: I would like you to guess which country and what was the
mission.
The country was Russia, and the mission was to find holes in its air defense
system through which U.S. bombers could fly to drop nuclear bombs on Russia
in the event of a nuclear war.
After Omaha, I visited a missile base in Wyoming and talked to a crew
responsible for firing nuclear missiles out of silos. The two young men, in their
early to mid-20s, performed a launch drill for me, beginning with their receiving a
launch order and culminating in their turning keys to fire 500 nuclear weapons on
the 50 missiles under their control.
That was the job that I used to have in the 1970s, and I was astonished at how
little had changed. The procedures were almost identical, except that the crews
today go to war on a military version of Windows 98, which is light-years ahead of
the 1970s computer system. Most astonishing of all was how little attitudes have
changed during the past quarter-century.
What a time warp. That crew could have been me 25 years ago. Like me back
then, they went through the drill without the slightest reservation about firing
enough weapons single-handedly to kill tens of millions of people. Like me, they
regard deterrence as crucial in keeping the bad guys at bay. It's as though the
Cold War never ended.
The incredible truth is that both the United States and Russia continue to operate
nuclear forces as though they remain enemies, as though one or the other side
might launch a deliberate, cold-blooded, massive and surprise attack against the
other, as though our security depends on preparing to conduct a large-scale
nuclear war on a moment's notice.
If a launch order were sent right now by the Pentagon and its counterpart near
Moscow, how long do you think it would take to fire their strategic forces, and
how much firepower could be unleashed?
The answer is that most of the missiles on alert today could be fired in two to
three minutes from the time the order is sent. The launch crew in Wyoming, for
example, could fire their 500 warheads in just two minutes. The submarines
would take an additional 10 minutes to fire their alert missiles. Altogether, the two
countries could fire within a few minutes about 4,000 warheads and send them on
their 15- to 30-minute trip through space to targets half-way around the globe.
4,000 warheads — that's the explosive equivalent of about 80,000 Hiroshima
bombs.
This hair-trigger launch readiness means that people are simply processing
checklists, enacting a prepared script by rote. This is how the entire chain of
command, from the bottom to the top, would function in an extreme nuclear
emergency. There is no scope for rational deliberate thought at any level.
For instance, consider the early warning crew burrowed inside of Cheyenne
Mountain in Colorado. This team maintains a 24-7 vigil to monitor missile
launches around the world and determine whether they pose a threat to North
America. Every day our satellites or ground radars detect several events that
trigger this team's drill to determine whether North America is under attack.
I was there watching the team in action not long ago. When the alarm sounded
within seconds after the sensors picked up an apparent missile launch, they
pulled the curtain and started their checklist. Some time later, they emerged and
explained that the alarm was triggered by the Russian military launching one of
their SCUD missiles at Chechnya. And how long do you think the NORAD team
in Cheyenne Mountain is allowed to determine whether a missile threatens our
continent? The are three minutes from the time the first sensor reports arrive until
they are expected to pass judgment.
If a threat to America exists, the president and his top nuclear advisors would be
immediately notified and convene an emergency conference to decide upon a
response. Among the briefings given to the president is one from the officer in
charge of the war room in Omaha -- who hopefully is the 4-star general running
the show there, but who could be a lowly colonel who happens to be sitting at the
war console at the unfortunate moment of truth. The briefer from Omaha would
explain to the president what his nuclear response options are and what would be
their consequences.
The quiz continues: How long is the briefer given to brief the president? 30
seconds. And then the president has at most 12 minutes to decide whether to
retaliate and how — 12 minutes, that is, if he expects to authorize a
counter-attack in time to get our missiles off the ground before they are
destroyed.
The entire U.S. command system remains geared to this rote enactment of a
prepared script, and so does the Russian's. It is a posture geared for the Cold
War, an anachronism that unfortunately is not just an historical oddity, but also a
real danger. It is dangerous because it runs a real risk of mistaken or
unauthorized launch, especially on the Russian side because of the ongoing
decay of their nuclear warning and command system.
This is all clear proof of how our security thinking evolves too slowly, how we as a
nation and a military establishment always seem to be preparing to fight the last
war — in this case the Cold War. The most compelling proof of course lies in the rubble in New York and northern Virginia. How is our security served by having
thousands of U.S. nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert and aimed at Russia?
In the face of the new terrorist threat, our conventional and nuclear might proved
powerless. Worse, our overwhelming strength for fighting the last war lulled us
into a false sense of security. Now we appreciate better than ever that security is
as much a state of mind as it is a physical condition. Our sense of security in our
own country has been shattered, at least for now, and it remains very unclear how
long it will take to recover our psychological balance.
In the meantime, defense business as usual with its commitment to the status
quo of a muscle-bound military that terrorists can run circles around is no longer
tolerable. Today's stale blueprint for preparing for the nation's security has gone
out the window. A small band of knife-wielding terrorists has rendered nearly
irrelevant a wide array of expensive conventional military hardware, exposed the
absurdity of maintaining massive nuclear arsenals and shown once again the folly
of unilateralism. Now, the United States strives to round up allies, including the
country presently being targeted by thousands of U.S. nuclear missiles, to join
forces with us in our campaign to eradicate global terrorism.
Our security establishment must quickly formulate a new national security
agenda. It must recognize the growing importance of diplomatic and economic
tools relative to military tools. It must show a newfound appreciation for the value
of arms control, especially non-proliferation agreements that help thwart the
nuclear, chemical and biological aspirations of many terrorist organizations and
their sponsoring governments.
Our government will pay a heavy price if we pursue our narrow self-interest at the
expense of other nation's interests and denigrate the value of international
cooperation as we forge ahead.
The tragedy of Sept. 11 has re-taught this lesson to our leaders. We need
partners in the world, including what had been the leading candidate to become
our next "designated enemy" before terrorism etched itself into the national
psyche and displaced China for this dubious distinction.
Our new security agenda must strive for real military reform aimed at countering
terrorism and other forms of so-called asymmetrical warfare. It must lay out a new
military doctrine and new budget priorities.
Since Sept. 11, everyone understands that internal security and emergency
management capabilities at home and abroad, particularly security for our
embassies, must be redoubled. It has also become clear that human intelligence
and special commando forces need strengthening. Our ability to respond to
disasters and epidemics must have higher priority in the budget sweeps.
A host of programs need to move up or down the list of priorities. A good example
of a declining priority is the new F-22 jet fighter with its price tag in excess of
$200 million each. Another is the billion-dollar reconnaissance satellites that lack
any ability to peer into caves or eavesdrop on small conclaves of radicals plotting
the destruction of America.
Another dubious investment after Sept. 11 is national missile defense against
imaginary intercontinental missiles fired against the American homeland. For
awhile at least, it seems likely to me that our government will pursue national
missile defenses more energetically than ever as our insecure citizens clamor for
better physical protection from the new threats confronting the homeland.
Black Tuesday's glimpse into the fanatical terrorist mind may suggest to many
that any crazy old thing can happen if fanatical people become armed with
long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. The tragedy reinforces the
thinking of those who insist that rogue leaders may not be deterred even if their
aggression is suicidal. And, furthermore, at this moment of national unity and
resolve in combating terrorism, all ships are rising as a result of the infusion of
money into security programs across the board.
As discipline returns to defense spending and priorities are more carefully sorted
out, however, national missile defense will undoubtedly be criticized for sponging
up tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars so clearly needed to deal with
low-tech terrorism. Even a 100 percent effective missile defense could not have
prevented the Sept. 11 horror.
The American public will increasingly demand that its leaders concentrate on the
threat so obvious today. Our ability to neutralize this threat may in the end
depend on a congenial partnership with the countries most antagonized by our
Star Wars agenda — Russia and China — and we may well decide that we are better off forgoing national missile defense in order to get on with the business at
hand — defeating terrorism and recovering from our current national trauma.
Blair is president of the Center for Defense Information. The author of several
books is a former senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the
Brookings Institution.
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