The possibility of ridding the world of nuclear weapons - long an idea championed by pacifists - is gaining serious study for the first time by people who have been key architects of the American defense establishment.
The Clinton administration is not endorsing total nuclear disarmament, so it will not happen anytime soon. But it is a sign of changing times that the idea is beginning to take root.Eliminating nuclear weapons around the world would mean abandoning what had been a cornerstone of American security policy throughout the Cold War when the greatest fear in Washington and Moscow was all-out nuclear war. It also would, if fully enforced, remove the risk of even a small-scale nuclear war.
But could it be done? Should it be done?
The Clinton administration is reassessing the nation's nuclear "posture" - how many weapons it needs and what role they should play. But it takes for granted that at least some level of nuclear force will be retained for the foreseeable future. The administration isn't seriously considering a zero-nukes option.
One who thinks it should be considered is Andrew Goodpaster. No anti-nuclear radical, he.
Goodpaster is a retired Army four-star general and holder of the Medal of Freedom. He was an adviser on national security affairs to President Eisenhower and later was supreme allied commander in charge of NATO forces, from 1969-74. Now, at 79, he is chairman of the Atlantic Council, a centrist group whose studies focus mainly on U.S. and international security issues.
"Nuclear weapons are not a benefit, they're a burden," he said in an interview.
The financial burden alone is estimated at $20 billion a year.
Goodpaster stressed that the United States should do away with its nuclear arms only if it could be confident that no other country would surreptitiously keep some. That's a mighty big "if," but he thinks the goal is worth pursuing now that the Cold War and the U.S.-Soviet nuclear rivalry are over.
Goodpaster is heading a multi-year study of how total nuclear disarmament could be achieved and whether it would be in the United States' interest.
Other participants include former Kennedy Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, longtime arms control negotiator Paul Nitze and Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to President Bush. The study is sponsored by the Henry L. Stimson Center, a centrist group that concentrates on security policy issues related to the demise of the Cold War.
Nitze said in an interview that he sees no possibility that all nuclear weapons will be abolished in the foreseeable future, but he believes the United States should take the historic step of declaring that it sees no circumstance in which it would use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for nuclear attack.
"It's just a fact" that there no longer is a military use for nuclear arms, Nitze said. America can defend its interests with non-nuclear arms alone, he said.
Even though the United States and Russia have agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals to about 3,500 apiece, the two countries together still have more than 45,000 on hand, of which about 21,000 have been pulled from the field and are awaiting disassembly, according to Stan Norris, a private nuclear arms expert.
Of the three other declared nuclear weapons states, Britain has about 200 active weapons, France about 500 and China about 450.
Goodpaster is not alone among military experts who think the United States would be better off without nuclear weapons, so long as the rest of the world also gave them up.
Gen. Charles Horner, architect of the allied air campaign in the Persian Gulf War and now commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command, says the time has come to go beyond the traditional thinking of controlling, limiting or even cutting nuclear arms. He says it's time to contemplate doing away with them altogether.
One of the most remarkable things about Horner's view is that he states it publicly. Even if other senior officers do favor getting rid of nuclear weapons, very few are willing to buck the military's traditional pro-nuclear view.
Some in Congress like the idea of a global elimination of nuclear forces, but few are willing to stick their necks out and publicly advocate such drastic change.
What about Russia? Oleg Bukharin, a Russian scholar doing research at Princeton University, said in an interview that as Russia's overall military strength wanes, the senior officers feel an ever-increasing need to retain a nuclear option.
"It is seen as more necessary, not less," Bukharin said.
Goodpaster recognizes the difficulty of getting the defense establishment, including the military's civilian overseers, to think seriously of a world without nuclear arms. When he raised the notion in an Atlantic Council study paper in May 1992, "it was viewed as radical" by most. But he thinks the Stimson Center study is a new step toward calming the traditionalists' fears.
"We've broken the ice," he said.