Prometheus 6

WEAPONEERS OF WASTE
A Critical Look at the Bush Administration Energy Department’s Nuclear Weapons Complex and the First Decade of Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship

The old Cold War nuclear doctrine held that a nuclear arms race was necessary to prevent democracies from capitulating to communist totalitarians, whose ruthless leaders could only be “deterred” from “aggression” by nuclear “counterforce” threats of personal (and possibly preemptive) incineration in their underground command bunkers. While this theory has had a resurgence of late, with Saddam or Osama in the role of the bunkered implacable, the stewardship paradigm for the nuclear weapons complex initially dispensed with the requirement for a credible nuclear target – none being readily at hand in the early-to-mid-1990s – or indeed any tangible intersection with real world conflicts. The quest for new nuclear weapons knowledge had to continue, we were told, because of its intrinsic interest to those charged with maintaining the present base of knowledge.

Without fresh “challenges,” the nuclear weapons stewards might lose focus, become bored, and wander off the DOE reservation, and then where would we be? In other words, the nuclear arms race, at least technologically, would have to continue unilaterally, albeit quietly (without nuclear test explosions), so that the United States would always have a qualified cadre of people ready to … resume the arms race.

Portraying this tautological new paradigm as a “prudent hedge” against uncertainty appealed to middle-of-the road Clintonites, who were looking for politically respectable ways to neutralize opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations thrust upon them by the Democratic Congress in 1992. They warmly embraced stewardship, as did many liberal and moderate mainstream supporters of the test ban treaty. Even traditional conservative boosters of the nuclear weapons complex seemed content to play along, using the program to shovel national security pork into their districts while they awaited the arrival of a more propitious political alignment, one in which they could dispense with arms control altogether.

From the low of $3.4 billion in FY 1995, U.S. spending on “nuclear weapons activities” rose steadily, reaching $5.19 billion (including allocated program administration funds) in FY 2001, the last budget prepared by the Clinton administration.
Under the Bush administration, the upturn in nuclear weapons spending has continued, to $6.5 billion in FY 2004, far surpassing the $4.2 billion (in FY 2004 dollars) that represents the average yearly Cold War spending on these activities.