Author: Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon
Loeb
Publication: Washington Post
Date: June 10, 2002
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22374-2002Jun9.html
The Bush administration is developing
a new strategic doctrine that moves away from the Cold War pillars of containment
and deterrence toward a policy that supports preemptive attacks against
terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The new doctrine will be laid out
by President Bush's National Security Council as part of the administration's
first "National Security Strategy" being drafted for release by early this
fall, senior officials said.
One senior official said the document,
without abandoning containment and deterrence, will for the first time
add "preemption" and "defensive intervention" as formal options for striking
at hostile nations or groups that appear determined to use weapons of mass
destruction against the United States.
Bush hinted at the new doctrine
in his State of the Union address in January, when he labeled Iraq, Iran
and North Korea an "axis of evil" and warned that he would not allow them
to threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction. The president
articulated the doctrine for the first time June 1 in a commencement address
at West Point.
By adopting the doctrine as part
of its formal national security strategy, the administration will compel
the U.S. military and intelligence community to implement some of the biggest
changes in their histories, officials said. That is already touching off
heated debates within the administration and among defense commentators
about what changes need to be made and whether a doctrine of preemption
is realistic.
But there is general agreement that
adopting a preemption doctrine would be a radical shift from the half-century-old
policies of deterrence and containment that were built around the notion
that an adversary would not attack the United States because it would provoke
a certain, overwhelming retaliatory strike.
Administration officials formulating
the new doctrine said the United States has been forced to move beyond
deterrence since Sept. 11 because of the threat posed by terrorist groups
and hostile states supporting them. "The nature of the enemy has changed,
the nature of the threat has changed, and so the response has to change,"
said a senior official, noting that terrorists "have no territory to defend.
. . . It's not clear how one would deter an attack like we experienced."
The administration's embrace of
the new doctrine has triggered an intense debate inside the Pentagon and
among military strategists about the feasibility and wisdom of preemptive
strikes against shadowy terrorist networks or weapons storage facilities.
It has aroused concern within NATO
as well. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the United States' 18
NATO allies in Brussels last Thursday that the alliance could no longer
wait for "absolute proof" before acting against terrorist groups or threatening
countries with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson,
reacting to Rumsfeld's remarks, said NATO remained a defensive alliance.
He added, "We do not go out looking for problems to solve."
Some defense analysts said preemption
carries the risk of causing a crisis to escalate quickly by increasing
pressure on both sides to act sooner rather than later -- forcing them,
in the parlance of the nuclear chess game, to "use it or lose it."
"Preemption is attractive on the
surface," said defense analyst Harlan Ullman. But he added: "As one gets
deeper, it gets more and more complicated and dangerous."
Critics also note that a botched
attack that blew chemicals, biological spores or radioactive material into
the atmosphere would risk killing thousands of people, not only in the
target nation, but in neighboring countries.
Even proponents of preemption inside
and outside the government concede that this more aggressive strategic
doctrine requires far better and far different intelligence than the U.S.
government gathers -- at a time when the abilities of the CIA and the FBI
to fulfill their current duties are under scrutiny.
Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon
proliferation expert now at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said that to be effective, the United States will need to strike
preemptively before a crisis erupts to destroy an adversary's weapons stockpile.
Otherwise, she said, the adversary could erect defenses to protect those
weapons, or simply disperse them.
But Flournoy said she favors moving
toward a doctrine of preemption given the proliferation of chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons among states supporting terrorists. She said the policy
may offer the best of a series of bad choices.
"In some cases, preemptive strikes
against an adversary's [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be
the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against
the United States," she said.
Under the doctrine, nuclear first
strikes would be considered weapons of last resort, especially against
biological weapons that can be best destroyed by sustained exposure to
the high heat of a nuclear blast, Pentagon officials said. But the focus
of the effort is finding new ways of using conventional weapons to detect
and destroy weapons arsenals, and especially the missiles used to deliver
them.
To do that, the Pentagon is studying
how to launch "no warning" raids that go far beyond quick airstrikes. The
key tool to execute that mission is a new "Joint Stealth Task Force" that
pulls in the least detectable elements of every part of the armed forces,
including radar-evading aircraft, Special Operations troops and ballistic
submarines being converted to carry those troops and to launch cruise missiles.
Beyond changes in weapons, doctrine
and organization, Rumsfeld and his top aides are trying to alter the U.S.
military mind- set. "Preemption . . . runs completely against U.S. political
and strategic culture," defense expert Frank Hoffman said in an essay published
this year by the Center for Defense Information.
In the past, the United States has
viewed surprise or "sneak" attacks as dishonorable, the kind of thing inflicted
on the American people, not initiated by them, analysts have noted.
One senior defense official responded
that 21st century security threats can no longer be assessed in terms of
the past. "In the world in which we live, it's not enough to deter," the
official said. "You need more capability, more flexibility, more nuanced
options and choices."
Defense scientists and war planners
are hard at work developing new weapons and capabilities to give Bush "options
different than those he may have had in the past," the official said.
At the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency, a $1.1 billion defense agency created in 1998 to counter the threat
of weapons of mass destruction, scientists are studying how to attack and
destroy hardened and deeply buried bunkers containing chemical, biological
and radiological weapons with advanced conventional bombs, low-yield nuclear
devices and even high-yield nuclear weapons.
"There was a time during which we
really didn't know what phase we were in, so we called it the 'post-Cold
War phase,' " said Stephen M. Younger, the agency's director. "And it wasn't
clear what kind of weapons we were going to need for the conflicts of the
future. September 11 clarified that. And we are getting a better understanding
of the types [of threat] we may face in the future and the types of weaponry
that will be required [to counter] them."
Younger said his agency is working
on advanced conventional explosives with hardened warheads that could penetrate
underground concrete bunkers and destroy biological agents with a sustained
level of extremely high heat.
"We want to use the minimum force
to achieve the military objective, if at all possible, with a conventional
weapon," Younger said. "We do not want to cross the nuclear threshold unless
it is an example of extreme national emergency."
But there are some bunkers that
are "so incredibly hard," Younger said, "that they do require high-yield
nuclear weapons." Low-yield nuclear warheads could be useful in certain
scenarios, he said, but they run the risk of spreading biological agents
across the countryside.
Rumsfeld's Nuclear Posture Review,
completed at the end of last year, stated that "new capabilities must be
developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply buried targets."
It also said "several nuclear weapons options" that could be useful in
attacking such facilities include "improved earth penetrating weapons."
But senior administration officials
said the tactical use of nuclear weapons is being studied, not actively
contemplated. "There is no one anxious to think about the employment of
tactical nuclear weapons," a senior defense official said. "That's not
what we are trying to do."
What the Pentagon is most focused
on, the official said, is a method of "advanced conventional strike."
Inside the Pentagon, some officials
suspect that the new doctrine may be acted upon sooner rather than later.
"I think the president is trying
to get the American people ready for some kind of preemptive move" against
Iraq, said a Pentagon consultant. He said it would not necessarily be against
Iraqi weapons sites but might instead involve a seizure of Iraqi oil fields.
But a senior administration official
dismissed the idea of a "bolt from the blue" attack on Iraq. "I want to
caution that [the president] was not making an announcement about imminent
action" in his West Point address, the official said. "Some people have
quite frankly said, 'Oh, this must have been about Iraq.' He was not making
an announcement about imminent action, but this was a doctrinal statement."
Rumsfeld may have captured this
situation best when he declined to discuss preemption last week. Asked
in an interview whether the U.S. government is contemplating preemptive
moves against other nations' weapons of mass destruction, he replied: "Why
would anyone answer that question if they were contemplating it?"
