Problems with current U.S. policy.

In October 1999, three years after President Clinton signed it, the Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty would have banned all nuclear weapons tests. President Bush has so far supported the Senate's action and, in mid-2001, asked U.S. nuclear weapons scientists how long it would take to ready the Nevada Test Site for a resumption of nuclear testing.

President Bush has clearly acknowledged that nuclear arsenals are already too large. According to Newsweek (June 25, 2001), he was stunned to learn of the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, saying "I had no idea we had so many weapons. What do we need them for?" Yet, the Bush administration is pressing forward with its National Missile Defense (NMD) program, which will require the U.S. to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a cornerstone of the nuclear arms reduction architecture signed during the Nixon administration. Combined with resumed testing, such a move offers the very real prospect of restarting the nuclear arms race with Russia and China and encouraging further proliferation of nuclear weapons by undermining treaty-based controls, to the great detriment of America's security.

U.S. national security policy is headed in the wrong direction. Nuclear weapons are not just unnecessary for security; they are counterproductive. In 1998, General George Lee Butler, the officer in charge of all American strategic nuclear weapons from 1991-94, told the National Press Club that he had "witnessed ... the catastrophic failure of both men and machines." He concluded, "The likely consequences of nuclear war have no political, military, or moral justification" and "The threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible." Butler is not the only high-ranking former military officer to hold this view. On December 8, 1996, sixty retired generals and admirals (from all of the then-declared nuclear-armed nations) signed a joint statement at the United Nations endorsing the idea that nuclear weapons can and should be completely eliminated.

How and when disaster will strike, no one can say. The potential for catastrophic human error abounds, and human fallibility shows itself in many ways. Alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness, and other serious reliability problems are common and can be difficult to detect. From 1975-90, more than 66,000 U.S. military personnel were judged unreliable and permanently removed from nuclear duty for these reasons. It is unclear how long they had these problems before they were removed, while they were still actively working with nuclear weapons.

Boring and stressful work, common in both the nuclear military and the nuclear power industry, is a frequent source of human failure. Trying to circumvent individual unreliability by requiring that groups jointly undertake critical actions (such as launching nuclear-armed missiles) raises group reliability problems ranging from bureaucratic foul-ups to group psychosis. Replacing people by computers cannot circumvent the problem either, since computers are designed, built, programmed, and operated by human beings. The bottom line is that there is simply no way to completely avoid the problems caused by human fallibility.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made it clear that, under their leadership, U.S. energy policy will focus primarily on expanding supplies of fossil fuels and encouraging the construction of nuclear power plants. Administration officials have said that the U.S. opposes the plan proposed at the G-8 summit in July 2001 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and encourage worldwide expansion of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. This plan, offered by the leading industrialized nations, recommends that rich countries "remove incentives and other supports for environmentally harmful energy technologies."

The New York Times (July 14, 2001) reported: "The White House says its opposition [to the G-8 plan] ... is based on a desire to let the marketplace, rather than government, decide how quickly renewable energy resources are adopted worldwide." Yet the removal of government subsidies outlined in the plan is crucial to letting the market operate. If fossil fuels had not been so heavily subsidized for so long, solar power, wind energy, and a host of other renewable energy sources would not have as difficult a time competing with them. The case of nuclear power is even clearer. Without enormous government subsidies, including special protection from liability, the market would have laid nuclear power to rest long ago.

The Bush administration's out-of-hand rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty intended to address global warming, has been a serious foreign policy liability, especially because no sensible alternative plan has yet been offered. To suggest that substantial expansion of nuclear power is a reasonable alternative approach to global warming is to ignore the fact that fallible humans simply cannot be relied upon to indefinitely control technologies that expose us to catastrophic risk, no matter how carefully those technologies are designed.

Technological development has much to offer. It has been critical to the growth of economic well-being around the world. But global policies must fully reflect recognition of the growing clash between the destructive potential of the most dangerous technologies we have created and the inherent fallibility that makes us human.

There are some dangerous technologies whose potential for disaster is so great that fallible human beings have no business dealing with them at all. Chief among these are nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. But there are nonmilitary technologies, as well, whose more benign purpose can be served by many, less risky alternatives. Nuclear power is perhaps the preeminent example.

Key Problems

* U.S. rejection of the Test Ban, and plans to resume nuclear testing and build NMD despite the ABM Treaty, will restart the nuclear arms race and encourage proliferation.

* Nuclear weapons are a national security liability. Sixty retired admirals and generals have publicly stated that nuclear weapons can and should be abolished.

* U.S. energy policy favors fossil fuel and nuclear power technologies, opposing G-8 calls for conservation and more renewable energy use worldwide.

Lloyd J. Dumas <[e-mail]> is the author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies (New York: St. Martin's Press-Palgrave, 1999) and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Texas (Dallas).