The Pentagon is pressing ahead with a plan to put conventional
warheads on inter-continental ballistic missiles for use against
potential terrorist targets. The proposed non-nuclear warheads will
be placed on submarine-launched Trident II missiles and will be
able to reach a target anywhere in the world within an hour.
The New York Times reported that a paper prepared by
the US Strategic Command defines the targets as weapon assembly
sites, any location where terrorists meet, or the gathering of any
known terrorists, even though such a gathering could easily
disperse before a weapon reached the area. Implementation of the
plan will cost US$500 million. The Defense Department has asked
Congress to approve US$127 million from this year's budget.
Earlier this month, two former defence secretaries, Harold Brown
and James Schlesinger, published an op-ed article in the
Washington Post, arguing that the US should arm some of
the ballistic missiles on the Trident submarine with conventional
warheads. They claimed that nuclear warheads on the submarine are
impossible to use in an anti-terrorist attack. They can only act as
a deterrent. However, if they were equipped with conventional
warheads, the Trident submarine could immediately react to a threat
from anywhere in the world.
However, some congressmen worry that this could trigger a
nuclear war, as it would be difficult, within a short period of
time, to educate everyone to believe that the warheads on the US
missiles are non-nuclear. Defense experts also worry that the move
could trigger a new round of the Arms Race. According to Strategic
Command General Cartwright, the plan aims to improve America's
Global Strike capacity with conventional weapons in fighting
against terrorism.
However, considering the US' unwarranted attack on Iraq in 2003,
analysts worry that other countries will have to increase their
defense budget in order to research and produce weapons that can
resist such a system. The plan could even trigger nuclear conflict.
If the US launched a ballistic missile, other nuclear countries
might take retaliatory action if they are unclear about the
strategic purpose of the American attack or unable to confirm if
the missile is nuclear or not. Due to the large scale and
long-distance destruction capacity of the weapon, there is no
country that will simply wait to assess the damage. Therefore the
possibility of nuclear conflict has substantially increased.
The New York Times reported that current Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fully supports the idea and hopes to get
the system operational within two years.
The Defense Department said it aims to improve its
anti-terrorism weapon capacity, yet terrorists and their training
camps are continually mobile. With the current network and separate
target strategy, it will be hard to fully destroy terrorist cells
with conventional warheads. The plan is a pretext to ensure
research and development funding for a greater goal. The plan to
place warheads on ballistic missiles indicates US determination to
be the world's dominant military superpower.
(People's Daily online June 9, 2006)
