Pentagon Concedes A-War Could Bring a ‘Nuclear Winter’

The Pentagon agreed with Administration critics today that an atomic war would cause a “nuclear winter” which might wipe out all life on Earth, but told Congress that is all the more reason to continue President Reagan’s weapons buildup and try to win arms cuts.

“The Administration accepts that a nuclear exchange would produce a nuclear winter effect,” Richard Perle, assistant defense secretary, told a pair of House subcommittees.

“We are persuaded that a nuclear war would be a terrible thing,” Perle said, “but we believe that what we are doing with respect to strategic nuclear modernization and arms control is sound and we believe it is made no less sound” by the nuclear winter phenomenon.

But astronomer Carl Sagan, one of the chief authors of the nuclear winter theory, said the concept “has policy implications at variance with current nuclear doctrine” of planning to respond to attack with nuclear weapons.

Small War Devastating

The nuclear winter concept holds that even a small-scale nuclear war would cause such tremendous firestorms and clouds of dust and debris to be thrown into the atmosphere that light and warmth from the sun would be blocked and all life would die.

Adherents to the theory contend that means that atomic weapons thus have no military utility and that their use would be suicidal. They argue that the only way to avoid nuclear winter is to eliminate atomic weapons.

Sagan testified that a recent Pentagon study of nuclear winter had caused “no agonizing reappraisals” within the Administration about plans to use nuclear weapons to retaliate against a Soviet attack.

Pentagon ‘Not Serious’

Sagan and Perle were testifying before the House Interior environment subcommittee and the House Science and Technology natural resources subcommittee.

Sagan told the panels that the Pentagon is not serious about trying to control nuclear arms and is instead embarked on a buildup of weapons in the belief that they are militarily useful.

He proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet research project on nuclear winter, arguing it is the best way to get the militaries of both superpowers to realize they have to back away from atomic arms as a means of protecting themselves.

But Perle responded that “there is no shred of evidence that our current doctrine is not the best policy to prevent war.”

That policy holds that the Soviets will be deterred from attack because they couldn’t destroy enough American weapons to escape a crushing counterstrike.

“Our policy and doctrine is aimed at preventing a nuclear war and is more so, given the consequences of a nuclear winter,” Perle said.

The best way to prevent nuclear winter is to build enough weapons to make sure that the Soviets will be deterred from attacking and thus causing nuclear winter, Perle said.