The Nuclear Jitters: Fear not research, and a wise deterrence.(need for research on low-yield nuclear weapons)

Life has been hard of late for the handful of journalists, academics, and pundits who have made a profession of being distraught over U.S. nuclear weapons and policies. Credible polls show that a majority of the public appreciates the value of U.S. nuclear capabilities, and the size of that majority has been increasing for over a decade.

Since coming to office, the Bush administration has rapidly succeeded in gaining the high ground on the issue of nuclear weapons. It decided on deep strategic nuclear reductions, and then codified them in an agreement with Moscow without the usual arms-control trappings of decade-long negotiations and 1,000-page treaties. Critics had called the administration's approach naive. Yet it triumphed in record time, and in doing so stole the Left's thunder and most of its favorite lines. Anti-nuclear activists were left to mutter that the agreed two- thirds reduction in deployed strategic weapons hadn't been achieved in their favored old, Cold War style. Most Americans figured that was a good thing.

Next, the president withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty, an agreement that effectively prohibited homeland protection against long-range offensive missiles. The anti-nuclear crowd responded along predictable lines: Relations with Russia would explode, an arms race would ensue, and deterrence would be "destabilized." The president withdrew from the treaty in June 2002, and committed in December to the deployment of new missile defenses. And the sky didn't fall -- it didn't even sag. Russian president Vladimir Putin reacted calmly, relations continued to progress, and, funny thing, the American people prefer being protected against missiles.

Thus the Bush administration succeeded at deep nuclear reductions, and moved forward on missile defense while demonstrating that the Left's three-decades-old arguments against it were bogus. Bush administration, 2; anti-nuclear ideologues, 0.

The core arguments of the anti-nuclear Left have not moved since the Cold War. They continue to apply the old set of talking points to contemporary events and, as a result, often sound absurd: We shouldn't build defenses against North Korean long-range missiles because doing so might "destabilize" mutual assured destruction (MAD) deterrence? Are we now to believe that vulnerability to North Korea is a condition we should perpetuate because it fits with an old deterrence concept? Not likely.

Nowhere has this inability to move with the times been more apparent than in the Left's heated response to congressional efforts, supported by the Bush administration, to allow research on precision, low-yield nuclear weapons, and weapons capable of threatening deep underground bunkers. The Senate and House have approved funding for a modest study, originally requested by the Clinton administration, to examine whether an existing nuclear weapon could be made capable against hardened, deeply buried facilities, such as might house an opponent's biological weapons.

In both style and substance, the response to these initiatives has been familiar. First comes the overheated, partisan rhetoric, intended to frighten and politicize the unsuspecting. A Los Angeles Times article, for example, warns of a "hawkish Republican dream," a "nuclear road of no return" that "could put the world on a suicidal course." Next, the truth is further distorted to justify the hysterical rhetoric. The current line is that these research initiatives reflect a cavalier approach to nuclear weapons and a rejection of the fundamental goal of deterring war. It's all nonsense, of course, but it's scary nonsense -- which is the point.