Pentagon May Have Doubts on Preemptive Nuclear Moves

Hobson said such negotiations would be difficult "with these kinds of policies out in public."

On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in Berlin for a meeting of NATO defense ministers, told reporters he hopes Rumsfeld would inform him if the new doctrine were adopted.

"Lowering the threshold for use of atomic weapons is in itself dangerous," Ivanov said. "Such plans do not limit, but in fact promote, efforts by others to develop" nuclear weapons, he said, according to Reuters.

Joseph Cirincione, who directs nonproliferation activities for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that under the draft doctrine, "the policy shifts more to operational planning. Rather than theoretical ideas, the doctrine requires the military to have actual plans."

He noted that in 1991 President George H.W. Bush withdrew all tactical weapons from the Army, including 2,000 nuclear artillery shells in Europe. He also took them off Navy ships, and removed them from the Far East, leaving only a few hundred tactical nuclear bombs in Europe. The new doctrine, Cirincione said, "is a leap back to the views of the 1950s, when President Eisenhower moved from city-busting weapons to those for battlefield use."

One former senior combatant commander said that planning for preemptive use of nuclear and conventional weapons was included in past doctrinal statements, but never in unclassified versions. "This is just a draft, but represents the lack of expertise on the part of some Pentagon staff members" for including it in an unclassified document, he said.

In addition to envisioning preemptive use of nuclear weapons, the draft document referred to using conventional and nuclear weapons in an integrated way, although details explaining how that would happen remain classified.

"For many contingencies," said the document, "existing and emerging conventional capabilities will meet anticipated requirements; however, some contingencies will remain where the most appropriate response may include the use of U.S. nuclear weapons."

When the draft doctrine was first submitted earlier this year for comment to the military services, Jeffrey Lewis, research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said he discovered this Navy response on a Pentagon Web site: "There is repeated reference to how critical it is that nuclear and conventional forces be integrated, but there is no explanation of how to do this."

Lewis said the Joint Staff responded: "Many things remain under development in classified fora, like the integration discussion."