Daryl G. Kimball

Published: Monday, May 30, 2005

WASHINGTON — Habits, even dangerous ones, can be hard to break. Unfortunately, maintaining arsenals of needless nuclear weapons has become just such a habit for both the United States and Russia, more than a decade after cold war hostilities ceased. Both countries possess tactical nuclear weapons originally built to fight a land war in Europe, which is no longer an imminent threat. In the meantime, the possibility that those weapons will be lost or stolen poses an unacceptable risk of nuclear terrorism.

The time for verifiably eliminating such weapons, beginning with those in Europe, is now if not sooner. The crux of the problem lies with Russia, which possesses at least 3,000 of these of these small, portable but still devastating weapons. Russia's nuclear command and control systems, as well as its weapons transportation practices, are woefully inadequate and vulnerable to infiltrators. The surest way to win Russian cooperation in eliminating as much of its tactical nuclear arsenal as possible is for Washington and its NATO partners to make some concessions of their own.

The United States and Russia have made exactly one significant bilateral effort to address the tactical nuclear weapons issue. Back in 1991, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to withdraw most of their forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons. But there is no way to verify that Moscow lived up to its 1991 pledges, and little is now known about the size, location or security of Russia's remaining tactical nuclear forces. On May 3, at the review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in New York, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany proposed that the 1991 withdrawals of nuclear weapons in Europe be formalized and verified, and that all tactical nuclear weapons eventually be eliminated. Parliamentarians in Belgium, Germany and elsewhere have backed the proposal.

Unfortunately, America and Russia continue to ignore not only the urging of their European allies, but also their own commitments to address the problem, including those set forth at the review conference in 2000. The United States maintains approximately 1,300 tactical nuclear weapons, including 480 stationed on NATO military bases in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. So long as the United States and its NATO partners continue to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, Russia has made it clear it will not enter into talks aimed at reducing its own arsenal.

Just one of these bombs would be enough to destroy a city. Whatever symbolic value the weapons may provide for NATO unity, it is far outweighed by the risk that even one of Russia's weapons might be lost, stolen or sold to another nation or a terrorist group.

Rather than reducing its tactical nuclear arsenal, however, America is actively exploring new battlefield nuclear weapons. The Bush administration is pursuing a modified version of an existing high-yield bunker-busting warhead, and there is talk of developing a new type of lower-yield tactical nuclear weapon. If the United States makes such a move, Russia and other states will scramble to match it.

Instead of escalating an anachronistic arms race, the United States and NATO should announce that they will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, and they should begin withdrawing their tactical nuclear weapons from Europe. That would allow Washington to move forward with Moscow on an agreement to consolidate and dismantle Russia's large and destabilizing tactical nuclear stockpile.

At the moment, however, America and Russia are both pursuing dangerously outdated nuclear weapons policies. In the 21st century, such weapons are more useful to terrorists than they are for fighting terrorism or keeping the peace.