NATIONAL PRESS CLUB REMARKS
                   General Lee Butler, USAF (Retired)
                       Wednesday, December 4, 1996
                            Washington, D.C.

     Thank you, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me say first
that I am both professionally honored and intellectually comforted to share
this rostrum with General Andrew Goodpaster. He has long set the standard
among senior military officers for rigorous thinking and wise counsel on
national security matters. He has been a role model for generations of
younger officers, and most certainly was for me. His views on the risks
inherent in nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use have long been
a matter of public record. I found them very compelling as I made the long
and arduous intellectual
journey from staunch advocate of nuclear deterrence to public proponent of
nuclear abolition.

     This latter role is not one that I ever imagined nor one that I relish.
Far from it. I have too much regard for the thousands of men and women who
served under my command, and the hundreds of colleagues with whom I labored
in the policy arena, to take lightly the risk that my view might in any way
be construed as diminishing their service or sacrifice. Quite to the
contrary, I continue to marvel and will always be immensely gratified by
their intense
devotion and commitment to the highest standards of professional discipline.

     I would simply ask them to understand that I am compelled to speak, by
concerns I cannot still, with respect to the abiding influence of nuclear
weapons long after the Cold War has ended. I am here today because I feel
the weight of a special obligation in these matters, a responsibility born
of unique experience and responsibilities. Over the last 27 years of my
military career, I was embroiled in every aspect of American nuclear policy
making and force structuring, from the highest councils of government to
nuclear command centers; from the arms control arena to cramped bomber
cockpits and the confines of ballistic missile silos and submarines. I have
spent years studying nuclear weapons effects; inspected dozens of
operational units; certified hundreds of crews for their nuclear mission;
and approved thousands of targets for nuclear destruction. I have
investigated a distressing array of accidents and incidents involving
strategic weapons and forces. I have read a library of books and
intelligence reports on the Soviet Union and what were believed to be its
capabilities and intentions...and seen an army of experts confounded. As an
advisor to the President on the employment of nuclear weapons, 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. 

     I came away from that experience deeply troubled by what I see as the
burden of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals: the increasingly
tangled web of policy and strategy as the number of weapons and delivery
systems multiply; the staggering costs; the relentless pressure of advancing
technology; the grotesquely destructive war plans; the daily operational
risks; and the constant prospect of a crisis that would hold the fate of
entire societies at risk.

     Seen from this perspective, it should not be surprising that no one
could have been more relieved than was I by the dramatic end of the Cold War
and the promise of reprieve from its acute tensions and threats. The
democratization of Russia, the reshaping of Central Europe... I never
imagined that in my lifetime, much less during my military service, such
extraordinary events might transpire. Even more gratifying was the
opportunity, as the commander of US strategic nuclear forces, to be
intimately involved in recasting our force posture, shrinking our arsenals,
drawing down the target list, and scaling back huge impending Cold War
driven expenditures.

     Most importantly, I could see for the first time the prospect of
restoring a world free of the apocalyptic threat of nuclear weapons.  Over
time, that shimmering hope gave way to a judgment which has now become a
deeply held conviction: that a world free of the THREAT of nuclear weapons
is necessarily a world DEVOID of nuclear weapons. Permit me, if you will, to
elaborate briefly on the concerns which compel this conviction.

     FIRST, a growing alarm that despite all of the evidence, we have yet to
fully grasp the monstrous effects of these weapons, that the consequences of
their use defy reason, transcending time and space, poisoning the earth and
deforming its inhabitants. SECOND, a deepening dismay at the prolongation of
Cold War policies and practices in a world where our security interests have
been utterly transformed. THIRD, that foremost among these policies,
deterrence reigns unchallenged, with its embedded assumption of hostility
and associated preference for forces in high states of alert. FOURTH, an
acute unease over
renewed assertions of the utility of nuclear weapons, especially as regards
response to chemical or biological attack. FIFTH, grave doubt that the
present highly discriminatory regime of nuclear and non-nuclear states can
long endure absent a credible commitment by the nuclear powers to eliminate
their arsenals. And FINALLY, the horrific prospect of a world seething with
enmities, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and hostage to maniacal
leaders strongly disposed toward their use.

     That being said, let me hasten to add that I am keenly aware of the
opposing arguments. Many strategists hold to the belief that the Cold War
world was well served by nuclear weapons, and that the fractious world
emerging in its aftermath dictates that they will be retained...either as
fearsome weapons of last resort or simply because their elimination is still
a Utopian dream. I offer in reply that for me the Utopian dream was ending
the Cold War. Standing down nuclear arsenals requires only a fraction of the
ingenuity and resources
as were devoted to their creation. As to those who believe nuclear weapon
desirable or inevitable, I would say these devices exact a terrible price
even if never used. Accepting nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of
conflict condemns the world to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety.
Worse, it codifies mankind's most murderous instincts as an acceptable
resort when other options for resolving conflict fail.  Others argue that
nuclear weapons are still the essential trappings of superpower status; that
they are a vital hedge
against a resurgence of virulent, Soviet-era communism; that they will deter
attack by weapons of mass destruction; of that they are the most appropriate
choice for response to such attack.

     To them I reply that proliferation cannot be contained in a world where
a handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves the
privilege of owning nuclear weapons, and extol the ultimate security
assurances they assert such weapons convey. That overt hedging against
born-again, Soviet-style hardliners is as likely to engender as to
discourage their resurrection. That elegant theories of deterrence wilt in
the crucible of impending nuclear war. And, finally, that the political and
human consequences of the employment of a nuclear weapon by the United
States in the post-Cold War world, no matter the provocation, would
irretrievably diminish our stature. We simply cannot resort to the very type
of act we rightly abhor.

     Is it possible to forge a global consensus on the proposition that
nuclear weapons have no defensible role; that the broader consequences of
their employment transcend any asserted military utility; and that as true
weapons of mass destruction, the case for their elimination is a
thousand-fold stronger and more urgent that for deadly chemicals and viruses
already widely declared immoral, illegitimate, subject to destruction and
prohibited from any future
production?

     I am persuaded that such a consensus is not only possible, it is
imperative.  Notwithstanding the uncertainties of transition in Russia,
bitter enmities in the Middle East, or the delicate balance of power in
South and East Asia, I believe that a swelling global refrain will
eventually bring the broader interests of mankind to bear on the decisions
of governments to retain nuclear weapons. The terror-induced anesthesia
which suspended rational thought, made nuclear war thinkable and grossly
excessive arsenals possible during the Cold War is gradually wearing off. A
renewed appreciation for the obscene power of a single nuclear weapon is
coming back into focus as we confront the dismal prospect of nuclear terror
at the micro level.

     Clearly the world has begun to recoil from the nuclear abyss. Bombers
are off alert, missiles are being destroyed and warheads dismantled, former
Soviet republics have renounced nuclear status. The Non-Proliferation Treaty
has been indefinitely extended, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is now a
de facto prohibition, and START II may yet survive a deeply suspicious Duma.
But, there is a much larger issue which now confronts the nuclear powers and
engages the vital interest of every nation: whether the world is better
served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear weapons reductions toward some
indeterminate endpoint; or by an unequivocal commitment on the part of the
nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of
eliminating these arsenals in their entirety.

     I chose this forum to make my most direct public case for elimination
as the goal, to be pursued with all deliberate speed. I firmly believe that
practical and realistic steps, such as those set forth by the Stimson Center
study, or by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,
can readily be taken toward that end. But I would underscore that the real
issues here is NOT the path--it is the willingness to undertake the journey.
In my view, there are three crucial conditions which must first be satisfied
for the
journey to begin, conditions which go to the heart of strongly held beliefs
and deep seated fears about nuclear weapons and the circumstances in which
they might by used.

     First and foremost, is for the declared nuclear weapons states to
accept that the Cold War is in fact over, to break free of the norms,
attitudes and habits that perpetuate enormous inventories, forces standing
alert and targeting plans encompassing thousands of aimpoints.  Second, for
the undeclared states to embrace the harsh lessons of the Cold War: that
nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, hugely expensive, and military
inefficient; that implacable hostility and alienation will almost certainly
over time lead to a nuclear crisis; that the failure of nuclear deterrence
would imperil not just the survival of the antagonists, but of every
society; and that nuclear war is a raging, insatiable beast whose instincts
and appetite we pretend to understand but cannot possibly control.

     Third, given its crucial leadership role, it is essential for the
United States to undertake as a first order of business a sweeping review of
its nuclear policies and strategies. The Clinton administration's 1993
Nuclear Posture Review was an essential but far from sufficient step toward
rethinking the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War. While clearing
the agenda of some pressing force structure questions, the NPR purposefully
avoided the larger
policy issues.

     Moreover, to the point of Cold War attitudes, the Review's
justification for maintaining robust nuclear forces as a hedge against the
resurgence of a hostile Russia should now be seen as regrettable from
several aspects. It sends an overt message of distrust in an era when
building a positive security relationship with Russia is arguable the United
States' most important foreign policy interest. It codifies force levels and
postures completely out of keeping with historic passage we have witnessed
in world affairs. And, it perpetuates attitudes which inhibit a willingness
to proceed immediately toward negotiation of greatly reduced levels of arms,
notwithstanding the state of ratification of the START II Agreement.

     There you have, in very abbreviated form, the core of the concerns
which led me to abandon the blessed anonymity of private life, to join my
voice with respected colleagues such as General Goodpaster, to urge publicly
that the United States make unequivocal its commitment to the elimination of
nuclear arsenals, and take the lead in setting an agenda for moving
forthrightly toward that objective.

     I left active duty with great confidence that the imperative for this
commitment, and the will to pursue it, were fully in place. I entered
private life with a sense of profound satisfaction that the astonishing turn
of events which brought a wondrous closure to my three and one-half decades
of military service, and far more importantly to four decades of perilous
ideological confrontation, presented historic opportunities to advance the
human condition.

     But now time, and human nature, are wearing away the sense of wonder
and closing the window of opportunity. Options are being lost as urgent
questions are unasked, or unanswered; as outmoded routines perpetuate Cold
War patterns and thinking; and as a new generation of nuclear actors and
aspirants lurch backward toward a chilling world where the principal
antagonists could find no better solution to their entangled security fears
than Mutual Assured Destruction.

     Such a world was and is intolerable. We are not condemned to repeat the
lessons of forty years at the nuclear brink. We can do better than condone a
world in which nuclear weapon are accepted as commonplace. The price already
paid is too dear, the risks run too great. The task is daunting but we
cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again.