http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-16/pols_feature.html1830 hours. All are in uniform: the military brass, their crew cuts periscoping above their dress whites or blues or greens; the retired military brass turned defense contractors, in dark suits with American-flag lapel pins, pivoting around the three- and four-star admirals and generals like so many schools of fish; the astronaut in his royal-blue NASA jumpsuit; Miss Nebraska, who teeters winningly, even with aplomb, between high heels and a silver tiara. Several hundred conferees are mingling and mixing over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres on the ground floor of the Strategic Air & Space Museum, a monument to military aviation on the Nebraska prairie, conveniently located (if you're a cornfield) between Omaha and Lincoln. Across from the two- and three-deep bar, tucked near the escalator well, a trio hangs jazz wallpaper. Over at a corner cocktail table, the wholesome (think young Kevin Costner), teetotaling Nebraskanaut autographs 8-by-10 glossies. "Aim High!" he exhorts.
Welcome to Strategic Space 2003, a three-day Strangelove-in devoted -- deeply, hopelessly devoted -- to touting the latest and greatest innovations in space warfare. We're in Omaha, a well-scrubbed town on the west bank of the Missouri River, the fabled Heartland of America. Agribusiness remains front-page news, particularly during the ongoing drought, but the biggest cash crop is not corn or beef or soybeans; it's the military. The largest employer is Offutt Air Force Base, 10 miles south of town. Deep within Offutt, in 14,000 square feet of reinforced steel and concrete, is the nerve center of the U.S. Strategic Command, or StratCom, arguably the world's most important and powerful military installation. StratCom, a co-host of the conference, has long been the command-and-control center for the U.S. military's nuclear-weapons capabilities. In 2002, as part of a Defense Department reorganization, it also assumed responsibilities for U.S. Space Command, giving StratCom control over all U.S. strategic forces. Whether from land, air, sea, or, as these 500 glad-handing conferees would have it, space, if the United States launches a strategic attack, it will do so a grenade's throw from the stage on which Miss Nebraska -- a digital flag flapping in the digital breeze on the digital-video screen behind her -- belts out "America the Beautiful."
The Pentagon reorganization signifies more than a promotion for the StratCom commander, Adm. James O. Ellis Jr. It also positions StratCom at the center of the Bush administration's efforts to overhaul nuclear America. Those efforts center on developing a new generation of "usable" nuclear weapons, a topic about which I aspired to learn more during panel discussions on "The Warfighter's Toolkit" and "From
Iraqi Freedom to Tomorrow's Battlefield." One thing I already knew from the opening reception. War planners not only are rethinking the unthinkable -- how and when to use nuclear weapons -- they're discussing it. Out loud. Over drinks and cheese balls.
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Nukes First, Questions Later
Their discussions are based on the "Nuclear Posture Review," the blueprint for the Bush administration's overhaul of nuclear America. The classified document (portions of which were leaked, initially to the Los Angeles Times, and now reside online at www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm/ ) urges a fundamental, radical shift from the principles of deterrence and restraint that date to the early days of the Cold War, when a superpower not named the United States also roamed the globe with visions of empire. In August 1949, four years after Harry Truman incinerated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union successfully tested its own atomic bomb. So began the long-lived era under the Cold War cloud of mutually assured destruction: We got nukes, you got nukes; let's do nothing stupid. Nonproliferation treaties, bilateral and multilateral, were signed; nuclear test bans implemented; arms reductions agreed to. But the Soviet Union fell off the map in 1991, and a decade later, 19 men armed with boarding passes and box cutters brought the U.S. to its knees.
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