SECTION 1. ARMS CONTROL AND OFFENSIVE ARMS REDUCTION

1. U.S. Pressed on Nuclear Response: A Policy of Less Ambiguity, More Pointed Threat Is Urged (Washington Post, 5 October 2001)

    The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York have invigorated national security strategists inside and outside the government who favor using nuclear arms to deter and respond to chemical or biological attacks.

Conservatives outside the administration have been calling on the administration to make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack. This would change a long-standing U.S. policy of refusing to rule in or rule out use of nuclear weapons in the event of such an attack.

A report issued in January by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) declared that "U.S. nuclear weapons may be necessary" to deter regional powers from using weapons of mass destruction or for "providing unique targeting capabilities" including buried or biological weapons targets. "Under certain circumstances, very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries," it said.

Many Bush administration officials have endorsed the notion of switching to smaller nuclear arms that could be used for, among other things, hitting chemical and biological weapons sites and targeting figures, such as Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, who hide in deep underground bunkers.

A report in June 2000 by Stephen Younger, who has been named to head the Defense Department's Threat Reduction Agency, called for smaller nuclear weapons as part of a "fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons."

Though a shift in the arsenal would take years to implement, an early sign will be the Nuclear Posture Review underway in the Pentagon and due to Congress by year's end. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, during his confirmation hearing Sept. 13, said deterrence against weapons of mass destruction "is a critical component" of the review. He also pointed out that the military already has "a number of low-yield weapons in the current stockpile."

Another author of the NIPP study, Southwest Missouri State University's William R. Van Cleave, said the review will argue "that we need to regain some capability for some low-yield [nuclear] weapons and particularly earth-penetrating low-yield weapons." Van Cleave, whose colleague, J.D. Crouch, is now assistant undersecretary of defense for international security policy, said some Bush advisers "believe we have marginalized nuclear weapons too much. We have removed them from extended deterrence too much."

For the last decade or so, U.S. leaders have been deliberately ambiguous about using nuclear weapons to respond to a chemical and biological threat. Then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said in December 1990 that "were Saddam Hussein foolish enough to use weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. response would be absolutely overwhelming and it would be devastating." Administration officials later said Cheney wasn't implying a nuclear threat.

Others defend the ambiguous nature of U.S. policy. "We've purposefully avoided drawing bright lines in the past about when we might use nuclear weapons," said a former senior Clinton administration official. "If we change that now, it would upset a lot of our core NATO allies, not to mention others in the coalition against terrorism we're trying to build."

A week earlier, on CBS News's "Face the Nation," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked if he had ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in the current conflict, replied that the country had never ruled out a first nuclear strike. "What we need to do, it seems to me, as a country, is to recognize how different this situation is, and then the traditional - think of it, the deterrence that worked in the Cold War didn't work," he said.

Opponents said nuclear threats will encourage nuclear proliferation and worry friendly governments. "It would create its own crisis, fracture the alliance and have no military purpose," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

2. Russia Ready To Develop New Strategic Partnership With USA (Interfax, 9 October 2001)

    Russia is prepared for a stage-by-stage development of a new framework of strategic partnership with the United States, Deputy Foreign Minister Georgiy Mamedov told the leaders of the Alliance of Lawyers for World Security - Robert MacNamara, former US secretary of defence, and Thomas Graham, former deputy head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency - in Moscow today.

Strategic partnership between the two countries "must be based on maintaining, consolidating and expanding the structure of treaties and agreements on arms cuts, limitation and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons which has taken shape over the past decades," the Foreign Ministry's report quotes him as saying.

Russia will submit to the 56th session of the UN General Assembly a draft resolution calling for preservation and implementation of the ABM treaty which remains "the pillar of the international legal system in nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation," he said. (http://www.interfax.ru/)

3. Russia Successfully Launches Two ICBMs From Submarine (Interfax, 9 October 2001)

    A spokesman for the Russian navy said that a Russian submarine has successfully launched two ICBMs from the White Sea to targets in Kamchatka in the Russian Far East 7,000 kilometers away. (http://www.interfax.ru/)

4. Russia Expects USA to Reciprocate for Closing of Radar Centre in Cuba (Interfax, 18 October 2001)

    Spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Aleksandr Yakovenko has welcomed the statement of US President George W. Bush, who described Moscow's intention to close the radar centre in Lourdes, Cuba, as a sign of the end of the Cold War.

Russia, "naturally expects reciprocal moves from the United States", Yakovenko told the press today.

"American radio-electronic intelligence centres, which were opened in the Cold War epoch and are still functioning, are situated in countries neighbouring Russia," the diplomat said.

"We have said more than once that we have serious questions about the station in Vardoe, Norway," he said. (http://www.interfax.ru/)

5. Buyer Discusses U.S. Use of Nuclear Device (Indianapolis Star, 18 October 2001)

    U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., said Wednesday that he would support limited use of a nuclear device under certain specific circumstances.

Speaking to reporters for WTHR (Channel 13) at Indianapolis International Airport, Buyer said that if the United States can prove a causal link between the anthrax and bin Laden's organization, "I would support the use of a limited precision tactical nuclear device. What does that mean? When there are hardened caves that go back a half a mile . . . don't send in Special Forces to sweep. We'd be naive to think biotoxins are not in there. Put in tactical nuclear devices and close these caves for a thousand years."

He added: "I am not a warmonger. I am not someone who says use offensive nuclear weapons. We're the ones attacked. This is a bio-attack. It's also important to figure out who is doing it. But I want you to know... if he (Bush) has to make difficult decisions - like Truman did to save lives - that he'd have support here."

Buyer added that he has yet to speak with anyone in the administration about the topic. (http://www.indystar.com/)

6. Rep. King: Nukes Should Be an Option in Afghanistan (excerpted) (Newsmax.com, 21 October 2001)

    New York Congressman Peter King said Sunday that the U.S. shouldn't rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons to stop Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban government from using chemical weapons against American troops.

"I would never rule out tactical nuclear weapons if I thought they could do the job and if they were needed," King told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.

The conservative Republican said going nuclear is "a question of military necessity."

"If the military people said that we think that certain chemical weapons are going to be used, we know where they are and the only way we can stop their use is by using tactical nuclear weapons - obviously we have to use them," King told Malzberg.

On Thursday, Indiana Republican Stephen Buyer told an Indiana television station that if the United States can prove a causal link between the recent spate of anthrax-contaminated letters and bin Laden's organization, "I would support the use of a limited precision tactical nuclear device." (http://www.newsmax.com/)

7. Missile Pact Still Divides U.S., Russia (Washington Post, 23 October 2001)

    Despite their declaration of progress toward an agreement on missile defense and arms reductions, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin remain separated by serious differences that have barely eased in two months of negotiations, a senior Bush administration official said today.

The official said the United States is "closer than we've been for a long time" to unilaterally declaring its intent to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limits the kind of missile defense system that Bush wants to build.

The Russians "are still hoping that this is the Clinton administration," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They don't seem to understand that this is a fundamentally different approach."

The ABM Treaty requires either side to give six months' notice of its intent to withdraw. Although Bush did not give Putin a specific date, the official said, "he made it clear that it would happen," perhaps as soon as January. "There is a very, very short time period in which we either make progress or we withdraw," he said. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)