12 March 2002

Powell Rejects Reports U.S. Is Boosting Reliance on Nuclear Weapons

Washington -- News reports that suggest a growing U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons misinterpret the Defense Department's nuclear policy review, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate panel March 12.

Articles and editorials based on a leaked copy of the secret report "did not comport with my understanding of the report," Powell said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the State Department budget.

Indeed, Powell said, the United States policy is to continue reductions in the number of nuclear weapons, President Bush remains committed to a moratorium on testing, and there are no plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on any other nation.

Powell's comments came in response to concerns expressed by Senator Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) over reports on the nuclear policy review that first surfaced the previous weekend in the Los Angeles Times. Those reports indicated that the possibility of a preemptive strike was at least under discussion, and that contingency plans exist for using nuclear weapons against at least seven countries: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.

"It seems to me," Reed told Powell, "that we are turning away from what was our traditional approach to arms control, which was a very deliberate, concerted, consistent effort to limit the use of nuclear weapons -- not to expand their use."

Powell sought to reassure Reed that "the drive to reduce the number of nuclear weapons has not changed -- it is accelerating, even in the absence of traditional arms control kinds of negotiations."

As for reports that "somehow we are thinking of preemptively going after somebody, or that ... we have lowered the nuclear threshold, we have done no such thing," Powell declared.

In recent years, he said, the United States has moved "from a situation where we had day-to-day alert targeting on specific targets all over the Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact to a situation today where not a single country in the world is on a day-to-day target list."

Given current realities, rushing into the use of nuclear weapons would make no sense for the United States, the secretary suggested. "The discrepancy in conventional capability between the United States and any other nation or combination of nations is greater than it was 10 years ago" and an overwhelming one, he said. "So we're no fools. We're not going to suddenly say, 'Let's go more quickly to nuclear weapons,' when we have such conventional capability."

The real meaning of the nuclear policy review, Powell maintained, is that "the American president has to have all the options that are available to him, alive and well, and thought through.

"And so when we look at the dangers that are out there, and we look at the nations that might be developing weapons of mass destruction, it is prudent, commonsensical, good thinking, politically and militarily ... to consider what range of options the president should have," he argued.

Expanding on that point later, Powell acknowledged that "for those nations that are developing these kinds of weapons of mass destruction, it does not seem to us to be a bad thing for them to look out from their little countries and their little capitals and see a United States that has a full range of options, and an American president that has a full range of options available to him to deter, in the first instance, and to defend the United States of America, the American people, our way of life, and our friends and allies."

Powell confirmed that "we are examining whether ... within our inventory (of nuclear weapons) improvements can be made or there are new things that we should be looking at." But, he assured the panel, "There is no new design out there or new nuclear weapon about to be commissioned into production that would require testing.

"We remain committed to a moratorium on testing. Even though we are not in the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), the president remains committed to a moratorium on testing," he added.

Asked by Senator Judd Gregg (Republican, New Hampshire) at another point in the wide-ranging hearing where he sees "the light at the end of the tunnel" in the war against terrorism, Powell responded that while "things are going to get better," there will be continuing dangers.

"I don't think a day will ever come when somebody can come up to you and say, 'Well, it's over. There's no longer a terrorist threat facing the United States or its friends and allies, and we have gotten rid of every last al-Qaida individual or cell in the world.' They will keep trying," Powell said.

But, he said, "we can reach a point where we can be less fearful of their ability to strike at us" because of clear progress in "tearing up their networks, understanding how they operate, going after them through intelligence efforts, through law enforcement efforts, through counter-intelligence efforts, through protecting our borders, through homeland security activity, making it a lot harder for them to do their evil work."

In an exchange with Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Republican, Colorado), Powell lauded current levels of cooperation between the United States and Russia that, he said, would have been unthinkable two years ago.

"People said the Russians will not let you do things in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. But, quite the contrary, they are cooperating with us because it is a common enemy -- not the U.S. versus Russia -- it's the U.S. and Russia working against terrorism, fundamentalism, smuggling, drug running -- all those things that are a greater threat to Russia than they are to us," he said.