Robert McNamara, who served as secretary of defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was a senior decision-maker during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The experience of peering into the nuclear abyss helped transform him years later into a passionate advocate for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The Bush administration would not today go that far, but a decade after the end of the Cold War, it is studying ideas McNamara has long advocated.
Q: Having nuclear weapons deters other nations from using them against you, so why do you advocate abolition?
A: Military operations are so complex–they’re more complex than anything you’ve ever experienced–it’s beyond the capability of the human mind to avoid mistakes in military operations. When you make mistakes, you kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands, but say, “Let’s learn from mistakes, let’s not make the same mistake twice.” In nuclear war there isn’t going to be any learning period. You make one mistake, you’re going to destroy nations. And therefore the primary lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is, The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to destruction of nations.
Q: Hasn’t the end of the Cold War reduced that risk?
A: There’s no military requirement to accept that risk today or for the foreseeable future. If we continue as we are, the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty will break down. There’s going to be further proliferation without any question. That’s very contrary to our interest. If one’s opponent doesn’t have them, there’s no real military requirement for us to have them. And yet–as has been implied, though it’s not clearly stated as NATO’s policy–today we are committed to first use of those weapons under certain circumstances. First use against a nuclear-equipped opponent is suicidal.
Q: Would a U.S. president ever risk nuclear war?
A: I was in the room when President [John] Kennedy, talking to the commander-designate of the possible attack on Cuba, asked, “Can you guarantee we’ll take out all those missiles?” And the general said: “Look, Mr. President, we have the finest air force in the world. We’ve trained for this all our lives. I absolutely guarantee you we can do this better than anyone else, but if you want me to guarantee you I can take every one out, or all but two or five, I can’t guarantee it.” And Kennedy clearly decided: “No way. Would I as president expose East Coast cities to one?” The U.S. and Soviet strategic forces have today 300,000 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, and these are on alert. And Kennedy said, in effect, “I’m not going to expose this country to one.” Was he right or wrong? I think he was right.
Q: Is it time to rethink the policy of first use?
A: I say the emperor has no clothes–has had no clothes. I don’t believe any U.S. president since the Soviets acquired enough warheads to survive an attack would ever have exposed this country to a Soviet strike. And since they acquired that capability in the later part of 1960, I don’t believe any of the U.S. presidents since then, beginning with Eisenhower, would ever have initiated the nuclear policy that we are committed to, that I was committed to, that I stated publicly that we would undertake. I couldn’t say otherwise. This was NATO policy then. It is NATO policy today.
Q: You have joined former CIA Director Stansfield Turner and many other civilian and military experts campaigning for deep cuts in nuclear weapons. Why?
A: We agree that the current situation is very dangerous. We agree that we ought to reduce the danger of accidental launch. We agree we don’t have to have anything like the numbers [of warheads] we have today, assuming we can get the Russians to go down.
Q: How low does your group think we could safely go? Below the levels stipulated in the Strategic Arms Reduction treaties?
A: Yes, many of them will say 100 is enough, or a few hundred, as compared to the roughly 6,000 strategic warheads allowed under the START 1 treaty, which is the only treaty that has been ratified. START 2, which has been signed but not ratified, would take it down to 3,000 each and so on. We sure as hell don’t need what we have. We can go far beyond START 1. We can go beyond START 2. But we need some.
Q: Will President Bush do this? What’s required to eliminate them, to get down to 100?
A: Time. It’ll take at a minimum 10 years to get down to 100. You have to have a verification system, and it’s very, very complex. And we’re going to do it by, as Bush said he would, initially proposing unilaterally to go down to 1,000 to 1,500, or whatever the Russians did. They probably don’t have more than 1,000 usable weapons today. They can’t afford it, and they’re going down. Bush implied he might go lower. Bush stated he would do certain things unilaterally. I very much agree with that. But there’s a limit below which I don’t think you’re ever going to get this government to go unilaterally, unless the Russians do. But why don’t we reduce the risk? And that requires the de-alerting.
Q: Do you think Bush would revise the doctrine of launch-on-warning and take weapons off high alert?
A: At one time we had 200 missiles or bombs targeted on Moscow, and presumably they had the same on us. Gen. Lee Butler has said publicly that for all the years he was the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, he had to be within three rings of the telephone. He had to be able to answer a telephone any time of the day, any place in the world, 365 days of the year, before the end of the third ring. Why? Because our launch-on-warning strategy allowed only 15 minutes to receive the warning and determine whether it was reliable. Many weren’t. The commander was then to decide what to do, what to recommend to the president. He had to get hold of the president, give it to him. The president had to decide what to do. He had to discuss it with advisers, and then he had to get the “football” and get the nuclear codes out of the football and transmit those to the launch site. And that was 15 minutes. That’s insane. That’s where we are. Now, No. 1, there’s no military requirement for it; No 2, there is an unacceptable risk. You can argue it’s a small risk. I accept it’s a small risk, but it’s a risk of utter catastrophe.
Q: Besides de-alerting, what other steps would reduce the chances of an accidental launch?
A: Now that is also controversial. We can de-alert–and not just de-alert, we can separate the warheads from the launchers. And we can do it with means of verifying whether the Russians had done it, and whether they’re continuing to do it. So if they move toward reconstituting their missile force, we’ll know that and we can reconstitute ours.
Q: You have called the idea of Bush deploying a national missile defense “extremely dangerous.” Has it already tied up the START process?
A: The reason START 2 hasn’t been ratified is that Russian ratification by the Duma of START 2, which was long delayed, finally came through, but it’s tied to the condition that the U.S. will not deploy an anti-ballistic missile system. And they see us moving in that direction, and therefore they say, “To hell with it, we’re not going to ratify START 2 without the condition that you agree that you will not deploy an anti-ballistic missile system.”
Q: Should the U.S. move more quickly, then, to push nations toward abolition?
A: Article VI of the non-proliferation treaty commences the move to elimination of nuclear weapons but there is no plan in the executive branch or the Congress to do that–none. And it doesn’t matter what we said in the NPT review conference a few months ago, there is no plan in the U.S. government to implement Article VI. None. So we have contradictions.
Q: Wouldn’t it be prudent to keep some nuclear weapons to deter biological or chemical attacks?
A: We can deter them and respond to them with non-nuclear weapons.
Q: Do you risk losing support for deep cuts in the nuclear arsenal by pushing too fast for abolition?
A: What we’re talking about is literally the survival of nations. This is absolutely fundamental. There’s nothing I think our nation needs more than to move in the direction we’re talking about. Otherwise we’re going to blow up ourselves, or the world, at some point. It’s immoral. It’s illegal. It’s unnecessary. But the immediate issue is to move off of where we are.
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An edited transcript.
