• Decrease the likelihood that a nuclear test will be needed
The development of the new warhead, it is claimed, will not involve any new nuclear testing. The programme will use modern manufacturing methods, improved analytical tools and other non-nuclear tests. It is claimed that the new Livermore design is based on components already tested and proved and therefore would not need to be tested.
The US Administration seeks to reassure Russia and China that this programme will only replace the existing warheads and therefore those countries have no reason to be concerned. It is also said that the new programme aims at reliability and safety and will use inert explosives unlike in the earlier programmes. However, the US very often begins its programmes with the assertion that it would contribute to strategic stability but does not take an indulgent view when another country follows suit.
The programme has evoked opposition within the US, particularly among the arms control community. The Congress has been funding the design effort since 2004 and it is not clear whether the Democratic majority in the Congress will make any difference in the funding of the future programme. Ironically enough, this new proposal comes at a time when four veterans of the Cold War, former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, both Republicans, former Defence Secretary William Perry and former Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, both Democrats, have urged in an article in The Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007 “that a major effort should be launched by the US to produce a positive answer through concrete stages. First and foremost is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to make the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise. Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, should lend additional weight to efforts already underway to avoid the emergence of a nuclear armed North Korea and Iran”. US legislative leaders have promised Congressional hearings on the issue of reliability replacement warheads programme. This issue provides a unique opportunity to urge the US to take it up with other states possessing nuclear weapons, to discuss the reliability of all nuclear arsenals, and whether there is any merit in the US enhancing the reliability of its arsenal ahead of all other countries.
... contd.
K. Subrahmanyam
