WASHINGTON -- Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, managed to gain a lot of attention recently with his proposal to sharply reduce the number of U.S. nuclear weapons while at the same time deploying a comprehensive missile defense system.
Unfortunately, his vague statements on these complicated topics only serves to hide the near impossibility of his keeping either of these campaign promises.
Under the tutelage of the security gurus that advised his father, Bush is touting the excellent idea of unilaterally cutting the U.S. arsenal to below the 3,000 to 3,500 currently called for in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II). He also talks about relaxing the hair-trigger alert status of U.S. nuclear forces -- something that, by all means, ought to be encouraged. These sentiments must be welcomed.
But it's not time to hail Bush as a friend of nuclear sanity. It is unclear, for example, whether he is willing to go below the 2,000 or so nuclear weapons now demanded by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Meanwhile he has embraced only half of the nuclear-defense policy advocated by he father's predecessor, former president Ronald Reagan. Bush's advocacy of a national missile defense system echoes the discredited "Star Wars" concept of the 1980s without the promise that it will lead to nuclear disarmament.
Reagan coupled his "Star Wars" proposal with a promise to eliminate U.S. nuclear weapons since such a shield would make the United States and its allies, whom Reagan promised to include under its umbrella, impervious to nuclear threats.
But Bush's recycled version of Reagan's dream promises to create a first-strike option for the United States by retaining thousands of nuclear warheads while building a defense system that, if it worked, could limit the damage of a return volley.
It should be obvious that such a new U.S. nuclear doctrine would have a destabilizing effect, leading Russia and China to build up rather than build down their own arsenals.
Of course, whether such technology is even technically feasible remains in doubt. So far, the Pentagon has been unable to verify if even a limited missile-defense system -- one that might just be able to hit 25 or so warheads and only if they come from North Korea -- will actually work.
Nor did Bush explain how he'd pay for any new missile-defense system while honoring his other key campaign promise: a whopping $1.3 trillion tax cut while boosting social spending by billions. The vast missile-defense system that he favors -- including a next-generation technology network of land-, sea-, air- and space-based radars, missiles, satellites, and lasers -- would cost more than $100 billion just to deploy.
Our allies in Europe are already queasy over what they see as throwing money at a problem that they are not convinced exists. They are even less enthused about the likely negative ramifications on global disarmament and non-proliferation efforts. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine was recently quoted as warning his NATO colleagues that the U.S. missile-defense program could have "possibly destabilizing strategic consequences."
It's unfortunate that Bush has been swayed by the missile-defense zealots, especially when he has come so close to the one idea that stands a chance of protecting not only the U.S. , but the world from nuclear annihilation: the elimination of nuclear weapons themselves.
Bush ought to have been listening to another of his father's former advisers, Paul H. Nitze, who last year wrote that "I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security."
Rather than fantasizing about throwing away billions in U.S. taxpayers' dollars on either limited or comprehensive missile-defense systems, Bush and his Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore, should be advocating policies that would lead to the total elimination of nuclear weapons as a component of U.S. defenses. That is the only realistic way of ensuring global security into this new millennium.
Daniel Plesch is the director and Theresa Hitchens director of research at the British American Security Information Council.