Nuclear Proliferation Challenges in East Asia and Prospects for Co-Operation—A View from Europe

Abstract

U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a still classified new directive for the American nuclear forces that defines the potential use of nuclear weapons in conflict situations. The new directive marks a departure from a nuclear strategy developed in 1981 under former U.S. President Ronald Reagan that called to fight an all-out, protracted nuclear war until victory, irrespective of social and military costs. According to the new guidelines, the future main purpose of U.S. nuclear forces will put the emphasis on deterring the use of nuclear arms or other mass destruction weapons against U.S. forces or allies by threatening a devastating response. These changes in the U.S. nuclear strategy have become necessary because the future nuclear defence planning and targeting requirements have to be reconciled with the denuclearization cuts of START-I and -II. Furthermore, these changes should encourage the ratification of START-II (which calls for reductions of nuclear warheads from 6.000 to 3.000-3.500 on both sides) in the Russian Duma. 1 Nonetheless, the Clinton directive will preserve an retaliation option of using nuclear strikes against military and civilian targets, if U.S. and allied armed forces are attacked particularly with chemical or biological weapons. Therefore, the United States will retain a triad of nuclear forces consisting of bombers, land-based missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-based missiles (SLBMs) but on lower levels according to proposals of future START-III negotiations with * Frank Umbach is a Senior Research Fellow at the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Affairs (DGAP) in Berlin. This analysis is based on findings of a research project "Perspectives of Regional Security Co-operation in the Asia-Pacific Region", sponsored by the Volkswagen foundation, at the DGAP.1 To ambivalent Russian reactions see Dmitrii Gornostaev,