Ex-Chief of U.S. Nuclear Forces Seeks Total Ban

The retired commander of U.S. nuclear forces called Wednesday for a worldwide ban on atomic arms, declaring that the ultimate weapons of the Cold War now have little military value.

In a high-profile speech to the National Press Club, retired Air Force Gen. George L. “Lee” Butler, who stepped down in February 1994 as chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, stirred a growing debate over whether total nuclear disarmament is an achievable objective or only a utopian dream.

Butler’s appeal came as 61 retired generals and admirals from the United States, Russia, Britain, France and 12 other countries issued a statement saying it is time for the five acknowledged nuclear powers and other nations capable of producing nuclear weapons to agree on a permanent, global ban.

The Clinton administration promptly rejected the appeals.

“The United States continues to believe that nuclear deterrence plays a key role in defending the [nation’s] vital national security interests,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

Butler asserted that the nation would be more secure without its nuclear arsenal than with it. He argued that the Pentagon’s superiority in conventional warfare--as demonstrated during the 1991 Persian Gulf War--is adequate to defend the U.S. against any plausible threat. Besides, he said, it is impossible to conceive of a situation since the end of the Cold War that would justify the use of nuclear arms.

“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,” he said. “We simply cannot resort to the very type of act we rightly abhor.”

In the abstract, the administration agrees with him. The U.S. government supports the goal of ultimately eliminating all nuclear weapons, although it says the ban must result from negotiations with other nations that either have nuclear arms or the capacity to produce them.

Meanwhile, the 61 retired generals and admirals, including 19 Americans and 18 Russians, issued their call for early negotiations leading to a ban on nuclear weapons.

“Movement toward abolition must be a responsibility shared primarily by the declared nuclear weapons states--China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States; by the de facto nuclear states--India, Israel and Pakistan; and by major nonnuclear powers such as Germany and Japan,” the statement said.