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Background discussion paper by Dominick Jenkins, Greenpeace UK Understanding
the leaked Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations 3-12, Final
Coordination (2) 15 March 2005 and the associated Editing
Log of the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations 3-12,
Final Coordination (2) 15 March 2005.
This
analysis of the Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations and the Editing
Log of the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations is broken down into
the following sections:
The
reader is also directed to Hans Kristensen’s excellent article in the
September 2005 Arms Control Today
“The Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons: New Doctrine Falls Short of Bush
Pledge,” which both complements the analysis below and also makes
important additional points. The larger context There
is a logic to America’s nuclear developments. The basic idea is that
America won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan’s massive investments in new
military technology, from stealth bombers to Trident ballistic missile
submarines, persuaded the Soviets that they could not compete. The result
was that the Cold War ended with victory. This has opened up a unique
opportunity. Through massive investments in new military technologies,
extending and maintaining its global network of bases, and the willingness
to use military force pre-emptively, America can turn that victory into
permanent military superiority. The
idea is that American military force will be so much greater than that of
any other nation that neither Europe or East Asian nations, which are now
emerging as economic rivals to America, will be tempted to compete with it
militarily. This was made clear in 1992 when the New
York Times published a leaked Pentagon document, Defence
Planning Guidance. This was written by Paul Wolfowitz, who now advises
George W. Bush, and its principal supporter when it first appeared was
Dick Cheney, the current Vice-President. The document argued that the
object of maintaining US military posture, in the Middle East or else
where, had less to do with immediate economic interests, such as oil, than
with discouraging “advanced industrial nations from challenging our
leadership.’ Aspiring powers in Europe and Asia in particular must be
faced with a military dominance capable of
“deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger
regional or global role.” The
1990s also saw the development of a new role for nuclear weapons. During
the Reagan administration new highly accurate nuclear weapons, such as the
MX missile and the Trident missile, had been developed to carry out a
disarming first strike against Soviet missile silos, a development which
was dangerously destabilising because it placed Soviet commanders in the
position of to “use them or loose them” if they believed they were
under attack. Now a new justification was invented. American nuclear
weapons would provide a counter to third world nations who might challenge
conventional American military power with chemical or biological weapons. These
developments have been taken a step further following the election of
George W. Bush. In the September 2002 National
Security Strategy, the doctrine outlined in Defence
Planning Guidance has been given official status. The document
affirmed that America had the right to launch pre-emptive attacks,
anytime, anywhere, to ensure that its “forces will be strong enough to
dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build up in hope
of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the United States.” The
implications for American nuclear strategy were spelled out in the leaked
2002 Nuclear Posture Review, this
stated that America would now plan to use nuclear weapons
“pre-emptively” to deal with adversaries armed with chemical,
biological, or nuclear weapons, to attack mobile missiles and deeply
buried bunkers, and to deal with “surprising military developments.” The
main significance of the leaked Doctrine
for Joint Nuclear Operations and the leaked edits to this document, is
that they show how this doctrine, and a decade of nuclear weapons
developments which preceded it, are now being turned into actual military
practice. The
Bush administration believes that we are now in the midst of a
“revolution in military affairs.” America has the advantage in this
revolution because it is already the global leader in military science and
technology. By undertaking massive investments in research and
development, America will be able to transform its advantage into a
permanent advantage. The idea is that by combining computer systems, new
communications technologies, new sensing devices, and smart weapons,
American commanders will be able to detect enemy forces anywhere on earth
and immediately destroy them while themselves remaining invulnerable. The
details of the Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations show how this idea is being worked out in practice.
The leaked draft document The
document and the editing log reveals: Global
Military Dominance.. The
core concept in the final public document is “strategic deterrence.”
This sounds like part of a defensive strategy because it is about
deterring. In fact, it is best read as part of the strategy set out in The
National Security Strategy in which the US seeks to take advantage of
being the sole military super-power to carry out an active
geopolitical strategy of converting the whole world to a open market which
provides assured access for US goods and investments and US style
democracy (see especially George Bush’s introduction).
This can be seen in the definition of strategic deterrence: “the
prevention of adversary aggression or coercion that threatens the vital
interests of the United States and/or our national survival” (viii). As
the Bush administration has defined America’s vital interests as the
conversion of the world to an open market with assured access for US goods
and investments, this concept legitimates US intervention anywhere in the
world to maintain and strengthen its global power.
This shift in US nuclear weapons doctrine, however, has not gone
unopposed. The editing record of the Doctrine
for Joint Nuclear Operations shows that there continues to be major
opposition within the US military to the ideas: that the distinction
between nuclear and conventional weapons can be blurred; that it is
possible to develop low yield “usable” nuclear weapons; and to a
conceptual distinction between counter-force and critical infrastructure
targeting which suggests that nuclear weapons can be used without massive
civilian deaths. Pre-emption.
The document shows that
America is now planning to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively in a wide
variety of scenarios. These include: (1) when it judges that a country is
intending to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons; (2) to destroy
biological weapons (but note the editing log shows that some US commanders
do not think this will work, page 106, paragraph 534, and page 109,
paragraph 147); (3) to destroy underground bunkers and other
infrastructure required to execute a chemical, biological or nuclear
attack against the US; (4) to counter “potentially overwhelming
adversary conventional forces”; and (5) to respond to “adversary
supplied WMD use by surrogates [terrorists] against US and multinational
forces or civilian populations.” (see 3.2). The doctrine, then,
envisages the use of nuclear weapons against non nuclear states in a very
wide set of scenarios. Use
of missile defences.
The Bush administration justified pulling out of the Anti Ballistic
Missile Treaty (ABM) because it argued that it should be allowed to build
missile defences to protect civilians against attack. The document, by
contrast, shows that the military is more concerned with using missile
defences to protect military forces, and to thereby enhance their capacity
to launch offensive operations. (see vii, 2.9). International
law. The document
states “no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations
from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict.” (ix, 1.9). There
is no really enemy capable of justifying the new nuclear doctrine.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact means
that the Cold War justification for American nuclear forces no longer
exists. The document deals with this problem in three ways. In the first
place, it no longer justifies nuclear weapons, and nuclear war-fighting
doctrines, by referring to specific enemies. Instead, it talks about the
need to have various “capabilities” to create a range of
“effects.” This new approach is dignified by talking about a
“capabilities based approach”(vii, 1.3) In the second place, it plays
up the threat posed by “regional powers” – the phrase which replaced
“rogue states” in the unedited version – acquiring chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons – so that they appear to be a threat on
the same scale as the former Soviet Union. And in the third place, the
doctrine refers to military history. “The lessons of military history
remain clear: unpredictable, irrational conflicts occur. Military forces
must be prepared to counter weapons and capabilities that exist or will
exist in the near term even if no immediately likely scenarios for war are
at hand” (3.1). This is, in fact, a metaphysical justification for these
weapons masquerading as history. The actual
historical context in which we find ourselves is one in which all the
major powers are at peace; and in which disarmament treaties, political
initiatives, citizen action and verification have succeeded in reducing
the world’s nuclear arsenals from 70,000 nuclear warheads to 27,000 and
by stopping nuclear testing have placed a major block on the constant
modernisation of nuclear arsenals and their spread to new countries. That
means, in the actual historical situation in which we find ourselves,
there is a major opportunity to reduce the likelihood of a return to a
major nuclear arms race by building on these achievements, whereas the US
plans to build new nuclear weapons and its new doctrine of nuclear
pre-emption threaten to restart the nuclear arms race and to place us once
again in a situation where the world is threatened, minute by minute, with
a major nuclear exchange. The editing of the document, the
law and civilian casualties The editing log of the
document shows a major rift within the US military.
The key place this occurs is between pages 63 and 69 of the editing
log which discuss nuclear targeting. In the earlier edition of
the draft document - which we do not have but key elements of whose
contents can be gleaned from the comments on how it should be changed –
the very idea that nuclear weapons might be targeted against civilian was
suppressed. This was done by giving two categories of nuclear target: ·
Counter-force
which means the employment of nuclear weapons against military targets. ·
Critical
infrastructure, the employment of nuclear
weapons against all those targets which are critical for the opponent’s
ability to continue fighting. The later concept
justifies a whole set of developments coming out of the “revolution in
military affairs.” The idea is that extraordinarily accurate cruise
missiles, for example, could destroy a power station right beside a school
and none of the school children would be killed. This way of classifying
nuclear weapons targets suppress an alternative opposition. This
distinguishes between counter-force
and counter-value. This is the use of nuclear weapons against non
military targets on which the opponent places a significant value, it
includes targets such as cities and other population centers. In section 351 European
Command, EUCOM, strongly objects to this way of describing nuclear weapons
targeting. It claims that what is happening is that the term
“counter-value” targeting has been replaced by the term “critical
infrastructure” and that this is a bad thing. EUCOM gives two arguments
for its objection. The first is that the term “critical
infrastructure” is not widely understood in the academic literature on
nuclear warfare and the second is that erodes the distinction between
nuclear and conventional weapons: “Changing
“counter value” to “critical infrastructure” obscures the reality
that although nuclear weapons are, in some cases at least, weapons with
military utility, they are always
political weapons in a way that other weapon systems are not. If we
loose the ability to speak in terms of “value” when dealing with
nuclear weapons and instead must think of them in “infra-structural”
terms, we risk losing view of the reality that the US may
at some juncture use nuclear weapons for political – rather than
strictly military—purpose.” (Italics in the original). In short, EUCOM wants to
resist the shift away from the Cold War deterrence idea that nuclear
weapons are weapons of last resort which involve a horrifying decision to
kill vast numbers of people to the post-Cold War idea that nuclear weapons
can be used in a way which is strictly military and may not involve
killing large numbers of civilians. EUCOM argues for a replacement paragraph on counter-value targeting. This replacement, however, itself avoids the whole issue that counter-value targeting has typically involved the targeting of cities. The arbitrator’s
response. In the editing log, an
arbitrator decides which edits to accept. The arbitrator is the
"Joint Staff Doctrine Sponsor” who comes from the Department of
Defence Strategic Plans and Policy Dept (nuclear). The arbitrator does not
accept EUCOM’s changes. It states that discussions with the Strategic
Command (STRATCO) lawyers were the origin of the suppression of talk about
counter-value which EUCOM objects to. According to the lawyers many
operational law attorneys believe counter-value is an illegal strategy
and, moreover, that it is no different from the terrorist doctrine
employed by Al Qaeda to justify its attack on the World Trade Centre. Its
comment reads: R Open – Need to discuss with Legal – STRATCOM
position from the Second Draft which generated the change to EUCOM objects
is: Many operational law attorneys do not
believe “countervalue” targeting (especially as defined in this JP) is
a lawful justification for employment of force, much less nuclear force.
Countervalue philosophy makes no distinction between purely civilian
activities and military related activities and could be used to justify
deliberate attacks on civilians and non-military portions of a nations
economy. It therefore cannot meet the “military necessity” prong of
the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Countervalue targeting also undermines
one of the values that underlies LOAC – the reduction of civilian
suffering and to foster the ability to maintain the peace after the
conflict ends. For example, under the countervalue philosophy, the attack
on the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 could be justified. In section 350 JSDS – J5
initially seeks to deal with the conflict with EUCOM by simply listing all
three categories, counter-force, counter-value, and critical
infrastructure. Interestingly, its definition of counter-value highlights
the point that EUCOM’s definition suppresses, that counter-value can
involve targeting civilians and civilian populations centers and is about
breaking the will of the nation to continue a war: In
some fora, a countervalue targeting strategy has come to be perceived as
synonymous with attacks on cities and population centres. The goal of such
targeting is to break the will of the adversary population; resulting in
the surrender of the adversary on terms favourable to the United States. The Arbitrator rejects this solution, again citing lawyers objections. The suppression of
the whole discussion. The final acceptable text
is given by JSDS-J5 in section 339. JSDS –J5 says in its comments on its
rationale: This
change and its associated one on page 2.06 removes the discussion of
counterforce vs countervalue targeting from the document. Also removed are
the definitions from the glossary. The final text is a
typical bureaucratic compromise which can be interpreted by all parties as
allowing them to go on with whatever targeting approach they favour,
whether it is counter-force, counter-value, or critical targeting: Nuclear
targeting seeks to hold at risk those things upon which a potential
adversary place a high value as it pursues its interests, and which
support the accomplishment of US objectives. Some other important edits Premptive
use of nuclear weapons (p.29, para
30). Changed language emphasises that n-weapons should be thought of
as political instruments. Cuts out language saying that n-weapons will
only be used in response to grave action, event or perceived threat. It
opens up space for use of n weapons even if there is no grave
action, event or perceived threat. Eucom comment correctly notes that n
weapons were used in exactly this way at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But,
fails to mention the fact that there was no military necessity
either or that its actual use was in part political to “manage”
Russia or that the consequence has been a catastrophic global arms race.
This part of the text gives us an opening to talk about the real story of
what happened at Hiroshima and its consequences. Eroding
the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons
(p. 56, 301). The drift here is that commanders should decide whether
to use nuclear or non nuclear on the basis of the effect they want to
achieve. The erased text highlights this instrumental approach. It makes
the obvious point that the integration of nuclear and conventional forces,
together with the development of more usable nuclear weapons, erodes the
distinction between nuclear and non nuclear in the minds of the
commanders. Collateral
Damage (p. 74). The excised text
“nuclear plans must consider avoidance of” collateral damage shows the
continuation of the powerful fantasy that it is possible to use nuclear
weapons to both control the world while continuing to act humanely. The
later text shows how the development of lower yield weapons is part of
this fantasy. Strategic
Force Integration (p.82). Excised
text talks about CDUSSTRATCOM accomplishes strategic nuclear operations
through the integration of US and allied strategic assets. Replacement
text ways it “may” do this. This change is due to EUCOM insistence in
section 427. That accomplishes does not reflect the actual relationship
with NATO. What these changes highlights is the whole issue of the
relationship between US strategic command of n-weapons and non NATO US
allies – for example, what does this all mean for the relationship
between the US military and the South Korean military? The
Offensive/Defensive distinction
(p.88, section 443). Text makes the point that so called defensive
measures, such as missile shields, cannot be separated from their part in
the development of offensive strategies. And see section 480 page 94. Future
threat analysis (p.101). The
excised text is a typical playing up of emerging threats. Its so
rhetorical and extreme that it actually ends up making the point that this
is just a US interest group making up threat scenarios so as to justify
its continued appropriation of masses of money at home and its exercise of
global dominance abroad. The replacement text actually accomplishes the
same goal, indeed its ultimately even more alarmist, but uses a more
authoritative and respectable tone and does so in a way that is less easy
to attack, who can deny that Pearl Harbor happened. In fact, the
replacement text is also very weak. It uses a few historical case to make
a generalisation about all of history, this hides the fact that there are
infact today after the end of the Cold War all sorts of opportunities for
nuclear disarmament. (Also, Pearl Harbor was only a surprise in the sense
that it was not known that it would be exactly at this spot that the
Japanese would attack, the idea that Japan might soon attack was
widespread – there is nothing like this true today). The US navy’s
rationale comment in 519 states the rhetorical strategy at work here. Lack of actually existing threats (p.104, section 529). The excised text “implausible” exposes the fact that there are no existing threats that justify the new aggressive and preemptive strategies for using nuclear weapons. Again, the standard move of appealing to military history as whole to stamp out the fact that there is a spark of hope that there is currently an international scene without major threats in which the world can cooperate to reduce nuclear weapons is resorted to. Critical
Analysis These developments need to
be seen in a longer historical context. The period after the First World
War saw the development of a fantasy that a high-technology weapon, the
manned bomber, could enable its possessors to combine control through
terror with humanity. There was the fantasy that dropping bombs on
civilians would lead to mass panic and a collapse of the will to fight.
This, it was argued, was actually more humane than the protracted
old-style war. War would either be deterred or of short duration. There
was also the fantasy, which played a key part in the development of
American air power, that precision bombing could enable a country to
defeat its rivals by attacking vital economic or communications centers
without destroying civilian lives. The South formed a
laboratory in which the advocates of strategic airpower sought to prove
that the air weapon could win wars on its own and more cheaply than
conventional armies. Thus the RAF’s use of the air weapon as a cheaper
way of exercising colonial control in Somalia and Mesopotamia (Iraq) was
claimed by the air power enthusiasts to prove the superiority of strategic
air power. The Second World War saw
the strategies which had been used against Southern peoples being applied
in Europe. The fantasy turned out to be a nightmare. The conflict saw a
process of reciprocal action in which the civilian deaths resulting from
limited bombing of economic targets led to demands for revenge and quick
victory. This led to counter- bombing on a greater scale and a spiral of
violence. The German bombing of London and the Japanese destruction of
Chinese cities was followed by the deliberate creation of firestorms which
destroyed Hamburg and Tokyo and by the use of atomic weapons against
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was not
the magic weapon the US hoped it would be. Having already seen most of
their cities devastated by conventional bombing, the Japanese did not lose
their will to fight on when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. Rather
it was the combination of the Soviet entry into the Pacific theatre and
the US decision to allow them to retain the Emperor which led them to
surrender. Nor was the Soviet Union overawed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as
Truman’s Secretary for States James Byrnes hoped it would be,
but instead raced to acquire its own atomic and then hydrogen
bombs. A global nuclear arms race followed. Wartime cooperation gave way
to a Cold War and to proxy wars … Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique,
Afghanistan … in which millions perished and whose results still blight
the lives of many. What we are now seeing, then, is a return of the fantasy that new high technology weaponry – whether nuclear or conventional – can enable world domination to be combined with humanity. This is being used to justify the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons which, it is claimed, can enable the US military to rapidly overcome Southern states which are developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The basis for this is an almost complete erasure of a history which showed the bankruptcy of this idea and which underscores that military strategies which are developed for use in the South may in time come to be used in the North. Notes Some background reading. Official
Documents. Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (A Report by The Project for a New American Century, 2000). The National Security Strategy of the United States (US Government, 2002). Critical
Works. Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power Dominick Jenkins, The Final Frontier: America, Science and Terror (Verso, 2002). Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So, ed. War
and State Terrorism (Rowman, 2004).
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan, (Harvard, 2005). Guide
to terms used in the editing log. The key player in all of this is JSDS - J5 Nuc which stands for "Joint Staff Doctrine Sponsor who comes from the DoD Strategic Plans and Policy Dept (nuclear). This is a person appointed to coordinate and adjudicate between all the comments and decide what is ignored and what is changed or added to drafts. There are two rounds of drafting before it goes to to the Joint Chief of Staff for formal approval and then becomes official policy. J1 = Personnel Directorate J2 = Intelligence Directorate J3 = JCS Operations Directorate J4 = Logistics J5 = Strategic Plans and Policy Dept J6 = Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems (C4) Directorate J7 = Director for Operational Plans and Joint Force Development J8 = Force Structure, Resources, and Assessment Directorate DTRA = Defense Threat Reduction Agency EUCOM is European Command LC = Legal Counsel (I think) NORAD = North American Aerospace Defense STRATCOM = Strategic Command SOCOM = Special Operations Command USN = US Navy USA = Army USJFCOM = US Joint Forces Command USFK = US Forces Korea USMC = US Marine Corps USAF = US Air Force USPACOM = US Pacific Command USSOUTHCOM = US Southern Command USTC = United States Transportation Command LC = |