Ex-Sac Chief Condemns Nuclear Arms Retired Gen. Lee Butler Challenges Pentagon’s Reliance On Nuclear Deterrent In Post-Cold War

Perhaps no one has looked more deeply into the abyss of nuclear war than retired Gen. Lee Butler, whose 33-year Air Force career was devoted to preparing for the unthinkable.

As commander of the nation’s nuclear forces, Butler personally approved thousands of targets for destruction, squeezed into bomber cockpits and missile silos to check readiness and shaped the highly classified nuclear war blueprint known as SIOP, the Single Integrated Operational Plan.

On Wednesday, the nation’s one-time nuclear warrior called for abolishing nuclear weapons.

With words that themselves carried considerable mega-tonnage, Butler publicly challenged the Pentagon’s continuing reliance on nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world, denouncing them as “inherently dangerous, hugely expensive and militarily inefficient.”

Some 60 former generals and admirals from 17 nations - including 19 Americans and 18 Russians - today will echo the call for deeper cuts in nuclear weapons followed by their phased elimination. They are urging the United States and Russia to cut down to 1,000 to 1,500 warheads each “and possibly lower.”

The signatories include retired Russian Gen. Alexander Lebed, the former Kremlin national security adviser who is a leading candidate to succeed president Boris Yeltsin.

Once an advocate of nuclear deterrence against a threatening Soviet Union, Butler, 57, now wants the United States to pursue the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons around the world to forestall what he considers today’s greatest perils: a devastating nuclear accident or warheads falling into the hands of rogue states or terrorists.

“The case for their elimination is a thousand-fold stronger and more urgent than for deadly chemicals and viruses already widely declared immoral, illegitimate … and prohibited from any future production,” said Butler, who was commander-in-chief of the U.S. Strategic Command from 1992 until his retirement in 1994.

Butler said nuclear weapons offer the United States little real security that couldn’t be provided better, and more safely, by the nation’s superior conventional forces.

However, U.S. officials say nuclear weapons remain a key element in America’s strategy to deter attacks.

“We continue to believe that nuclear weapons will be part of the cornerstone of our current strategy for some time into the future,” National Security Council spokesman David Johnson said. “So there is not of course a complete agreement between us and the generals.”

Both the United States and Russia are having trouble breaking the nuclear habit. The United States has reduced its nuclear arsenal from 12,700 warheads to 8,400 since 1990 and Russia has gone down from 10,800 to 6,700. The yet-unimplemented START II treaty requires each side to cut back to 3,500 warheads over the next six years.

The Clinton administration said it was willing to discuss further cuts, to below 2,500 warheads, once a reluctant Russian parliament ratified START II.

Butler adds a credible voice to the movement calling for a commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons.

That’s a goal already advocated by arms control groups, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops and by influential military experts such as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former NATO commanders Gens. Andrew Goodpaster and John Galvin.

The Pentagon is sticking to its 1995 nuclear-posture review, which envisioned the START II level of 3,500 warheads as reasonable for U.S. security. Maintaining U.S. nuclear forces costs about $30 billion a year, according to Stephen Schwartz of the Brookings Institution.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IN HIS OWN WORDS “I am compelled to speak by concerns I cannot still. I feel the weight of a special obligation … a responsibility born of unique experience. “I have spent years studying nuclear weapons effects … and approved thousands of targets for nuclear destruction. I have anguished over the imponderable complexities, the profound moral dilemmas and the mind-numbing compression of decision making under the threat of nuclear attack. “Nuclear war is a raging, insatiable beast whose instincts and appetites we pretend to understand but could not possibly control. “We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace. The task is daunting but … the opportunity may not come again.” - Retired Gen. Lee Butler