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March 11, 1999
(unofficial transcript)
Let me begin my simply expressing my appreciation to those of you in
the
room who have labored in this vineyard for so many years, most I
suspect, simply understanding intuitively what took years for those
of
us, presumably experts in this business, to appreciate.
And that is that at the heart of the matter nuclear weapons are simply
the enemy of humanity. Indeed, they're not weapons at all.
They're
some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time
and
space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.
So for those of you in the NGO community, I tell you right at the onset,
that I personally take heard and encouragement from what you have done
so assiduously all these years. I say in the same breath that for most
of my life, certainly my years in uniform, I'd never heard of NGOs,
and
now I suppose I am one!
And I think in that regard that I would begin by recalling a comment
from what I understand was a Reform Party member at the hearing
yesterday, and who observed at the outset of his comments, a bit acerbic
I might add (but that's okay, we tend to be a lightening rod for that
kind of view): "Say, weren't you and McNamara two of those folks who
used to advocate all this business, deterrence, etc.?" I think
Bob
would join me in saying that we're guilty as charged, if the charge
is
that we now consider it our responsibility to reflect, free from the
emotional cauldron of the Cold War, and with greater access to the
principals within the archives of that period. Guilty of the
responsibility to reappraise our positions and certainly guilty of
a
keen sense of obligation to understand and to expound upon the lessons
that we draw from that experience.
I guess I recall to mind the words of a wonderful American novelist
of
the Deep South, Flannery O'Connor, who once put this delicious line
in
the mouth of one her characters. She said "You should know the truth
and
the truth shall make you odd." And in deference to our interlocutor
yesterday, yes it can certainly appear odd. I appreciate that
and that
is why I am infinitely patient with people who are either surprised,
shocked, or in some cases outraged that someone like myself or perhaps
like Bob McNamara might not express views that in an earlier part of
our
life we might have seen as antithetical.
But truth, in my own case, it took me almost 40 years to grasp what
I
currently see as the truth of the nuclear era as I understand it in
retrospect. 40 years simply to reach the point in my career where I
had
the responsibilities and most importantly, the access to information
and
the exposure to activities and operations that profoundly deepened
my
grasp of what this business of nuclear capability is all about.
What I have come to believe is that much of what I took on faith was
either wrong, enormously simplistic, extraordinarily fragile, or simply
morally intolerable. What I have come to believe is that the
amassing
of nuclear capability to the level of such grotesque excess as we
witnessed between the United States and the Soviet Union over the period
of the 50 years of the Cold War, was as much a product of fear, and
ignorance and greed, and ego and power, and turf and dollars, as it
was
about the seemingly elegant theories of deterrence.
Let me just take a moment and give you some sense of what it means to
be
the Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, the land and sea-based
missiles and aircraft that would deliver nuclear warheads over great
distances. First, I had the responsibility for the day-to-day operation,
discipline, training, of tens of thousands of crew members, the systems
that they operated and the warheads those systems were designed to
deliver. Some ten thousand strategic nuclear warheads. I came
to
appreciate in a way that I had never thought, even when I commanded
individual units like B52 bombers, the enormity of the day-to-day risks
that comes from multiple manipulations, maintenance and operational
movement of those weapons. I read deeply into the history of
the
incidents and the accidents of the nuclear age simply as they had been
recorded in the United States. I am only beginning to understand
that
history in the Soviet Union, and it is more chilling than anything
you
can imagine. Much of that is not publicly known, although it is now
publicly available.
Missiles that blew up in their silos and ejected their nuclear warheads
outside of the confines of the silo itself. B52 aircraft that collided
with tankers and scattered nuclear weapons across the coast and into
the
offshore seas of Spain. A B52 bomber with 4 nuclear weapons aboard
that
crashed in North Carolina, and on investigation it was discovered that
6
of the 7 safety devices that prevent a nuclear explosion had failed
as a
result of the crash. There are dozens of such incidents. Nuclear
missile-laden submarines that experienced catastrophic accidents and
now
lie at the bottom of the ocean.
I was also a principal nuclear advisor to the President of the United
States. What that required of me was to be prepared on a moment's
notice, day or night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to be within three
rings of my telephone and to respond to the question from the President:
"General, the nation is under nuclear attack. This is its
characterization. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature
of our reply?"
In the 36 months that I was a principle nuclear advisor to the
President, I participated every month in an exercise known as a missile
threat conference. Virtually without exception, that threat conference
began with a scenario which encompassed one, then several, dozens,
then
hundreds and finally thousands of inbound thermonuclear warheads to
the
United States. By the time that attack was assessed, characterized
and
sufficient information available with some certainty in appreciation
of
the circumstance, at most he had 12 minutes to make that decision.
12
minutes. For a decision, which coupled with that of whatever person
12,000 miles away who may have initiated such an attack, held at risk
not only the survival of the antagonist, but the fate of mankind in
its
entirety. The prospect of some 20,000 thermonuclear warheads being
exploded within that period of several hours. Sad to say, the
poised
practitioners of the nuclear art never understood the holistic
consequences of such an attack.
I never appreciated that until I came to grips with my third
responsibility, which was for the nuclear war plan of the United States.
Even at the late date of January 1991, when the Cold War had already
been declared over with the signing of the conventional forces in Europe
treaty in Paris in December of 1990, when I went downstairs on my first
day in officer to meet my war planners, some 1000 of them in the bowels
of my headquarters, and finally for the first time in my 40 years was
allowed full access to the war plan. Even having some sense of
what it
encompassed, I was shocked to see that in fact it was defined by 12,500
targets in the former Soviet Union to be attacked by some 10,000 nuclear
weapons, virtually simultaneously in the worst of circumstances, which
is what we always assumed. I made it my business to examine in some
detail every single one of those targets. I doubt that that had ever
been done by anyone, because the war plan was divided up into sections
and each section was the responsibility of some different group of
people. My staff was aghast when I told them I intended to look
at
every single target individually. Then my rationale was very simple.
If
there had been only one target, surely I would have know every
conceivable detail about it, why it was selected, what kind of weapon,
what the consequences would be. My point was simply this: Why should
I
feel in any way less responsible simply because there was a large number
of targets. I wanted to look at every one.
At the conclusion of that exercise I finally came to understand the
true
meaning of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. With the possible
exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most
absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life.
I was
sufficiently outraged that as my examination proceeded, I alerted my
superiors in Washington about my concerns, and the shortest version
of
all of that is that, having come to the end of a four decade journey,
I
came to fully appreciate the truth that now makes me seem so odd. And
that is: we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some
combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the
latter in greatest proportion.
The saving grace was that truly the Cold War was ending at this very
moment and therefore I was faced with a decision of great personal
consequence. Now having fully to appreciate the magnitude of our nuclear
capability and what it implied, when joining an unholy alliance with
its
Soviet counterpart, what was I to do? Awaiting in my inbox were $40
billion of new strategic nuclear weapons modernization programs, wanting
only my signature. What should be our goals for the next rounds of
arms
control negotiations? How hard should I fight to maintain the budget
of
strategic forces, to keep bases open in the face of base closure
commissions? And what to do with the nuclear war plan in all of its
excess? My conclusion was very simple, and that I of all people
had the
responsibility to be at the forefront of the effort to begin to close
the nuclear age. That mankind, having been spared a nuclear holocaust,
had now as its principle priority to begin to walk back the nuclear
cat,
to learn the lessons of the nuclear dimensions of the Cold War, in
the
interests that others might never go down that path again.
The substance is that I withdrew my support for every single one of
those $40 billion of nuclear weapons programs and they were all
canceled. I urged the acceleration of the START I accords and the
Minuteman 2 was taken out of the inventory at a much earlier date than
was imagined. I recommended that for the first time in 30 years
that
bombers be taken off alert. The President approved that recommendation
and on the 25th of September 1991, I said up at my command center that
with my red telephone I gave the orders to my bomber troops to stand
down from alert. I put 24 of my 36 bases on the closure list. I cut
the
number of targets in the nuclear war plan by 75%, and ultimately I
recommended the disestablishment of Strategic Air Command, which the
President also approved. I took down that flag on the first of June
1992.
As you can imagine, I went into retirement exactly five years ago with
a
sense of profound relief and gratitude. Relief that the most
acute
dangers of the Cold War were coming to a close, and gratitude that
I had
been given the opportunity to play some small role in eliminating those
dangers. You can also imagine, then, my growing dismay, alarm and
finally horror that in a relatively brief period of time, this
extraordinary momentum, this unprecedented opportunity began to slow,
that a process that I call a creeping re-rationalization of nuclear
weapons began, that the bureaucracy began again to work its way. The
French resumed nuclear testing, the START 2 treaty was paralyzed in
the
US Senate for three years and now in the Duma for three more. The
precious window of opportunity began to close, and now today we find
ourselves in the almost unbelievable circumstance in which United States
nuclear weapons policy is still very much that of 1984, as introduced
by
Ronald Reagan. That [...] our forces and their hair-trigger work
postures are effectively the same as they have been since the height
of
the Cold War period.
Even if the START 2 treaty were ratified, it is virtually irrelevant,
its numbers are meaningless. 3000 to 3500, the former Soviet Union,
today Russia, a nation in a perilous state can barely maintain a third
of that number on operational ready status, and to do so devotes a
precious fraction of shrinking resources. NATO has been expanded up
to
its very borders, and they have already been put on notice that the
United States is presumably prepared to abrogate the ABM treaty in
the
interest of deployment of some limited national ballistic missile
defense.
What a stunning outcome. I would never have imagined this state of
affairs five years ago. This is an indictment. The leaders of
the
nuclear weapons states today risk very much being judged by future
historians as having been unworthy of their age, of not having taken
advantage of opportunities so perilously won at such great sacrifice
and
cost. I am seeing a reinitiative of nuclear arms races around
the
world, and condemning mankind to live under a cloud of perpetual
anxiety. This is not a legacy worthy of the human race.
This is not
the world that I want to bequeath to my children and my grandchildren.
It's simply intolerable. This is above all a moral question and I want
to reiterate to you and to those who may be watching these proceedings
a
quote that I gave yesterday to the joint committees. I took this
quote
to heart many years ago. It is from one of my heroes, one of
my
professional heroes, General [Whitmore] Bradley, who said on the
occasion of his retirement, having been a principle in world war 2
and
having witnessed the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, General Bradley observed that: We live in an age of nuclear
giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance
without wisdom, power without conscience. We solved the mystery of
the
atom and forgot the lessons of the sermon on the mountain; we know
more
about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about
living. We begin with an opportunity to elevate, to nudge higher,
to
borrow decent civilized behavior, to expand the rule of law, and to
learn to live on this planet with mutual respect and dignity.
My conclusion ultimately is that I cannot sit in silent acquiescence
to
the current folly, and so I have come back into the arena to join my
voices with yours, to serve in the company of distinguished colleagues,
all of whom share these concerns and convictions. Thank you for
the
opportunity to join you today. Thank you for the work you have done
over
these many years and it is a privilege to have this opportunity to
share
with you.
Thank you.
END