Renewable Revolution

Ex-Chief of Nuclear Forces General Lee Butler Still Dismayed by Deterrence Theory and Missiles on Hair-Trigger Alert

by Robert Kazel
 
After the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the danger of nuclear weapons faded as a source of anxiety for some Americans. To them, worrying that the world’s stockpiles of missiles and bombs could eventually create catastrophe seemed as anachronistic as the duck-and-cover classroom drills of a previous generation. But for George Lee Butler, a four-star U.S. Air Force general and the commander of U.S. nuclear forces between 1991 and 1994, thinking about the possibility of just such a calamity didn’t end. The reality was always a phone call away.

The calls would come at least once a month, and there was never advance warning. Butler might be anywhere: his office at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb., or traveling, or home sleeping. A hotline to other military officers and the White House sat on a bedside table, closer to his wife’s head because she was the lighter sleeper.

It always turned out to be an exercise—World War III obviously never broke out during Butler’s tenure. But, at least at the outset, he never knew for sure. The games were thought to be more useful if the participants—even a key player such as Butler—were kept in the dark about that.

Every drill ran an identical course; the dialog was scripted. An officer from NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, informed Butler that satellites and ground radar had seemingly detected nuclear missiles flying toward the United States. After a brief talk about the extent of the apparent attack, Butler was required to phone the President.

“You can imagine, it’s 2:37 in the morning, and the President has been at a gala that night—not feeling very well, kind of groggy,” Butler says today. “He gets a call from me that says, ‘Sir, the United States is under nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. It appears to be a wholesale nuclear attack: land-, sea- and air-based.’  At that point, while I’m talking, the Major with the briefcase [with Presidential nuclear launch codes] is unlocking it and pulling out the black three-ring binder.”

Actual presidents—in Butler’s day, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton—never took part in these “missile threat conferences.” Like a stand-in for a movie star who wished to avoid an unpleasant stunt, someone else always acted out the role of commander-in-chief at the other end of the line. Butler felt disgust that such a crucial task was left to a substitute.

Butler, pictured (at the link) here in 1983, was commander of the 320th Bombardment Wing, Mather Air Force Base, east of Sacramento, Cal. The base was home to long-range, B-52 strategic bombers on alert for the Strategic Air Command.

Few knew it, but for Butler that sense of abhorrence gradually began to encompass nuclear weapons in general, as he became privy to more secrets about them. After he retired from the Air Force in 1994 as head of the U.S. Strategic Command (where he had authority over land-based missiles, bombers, and nuclear submarines), he worked for a time as president of a Nebraska-based energy company. Then, his life transformed in a way that he could never have anticipated.

The former Air Force career officer and decorated Vietnam War pilot, considered one of the most knowledgeable experts on nuclear weapons and strategy in the world, began talking like the most passionate of anti-nuclear activists. A fascinated media listened, all over the world.

Full article shedding much light on our CONTINUED nuclear insecurity:

http://www.wagingpeace.org/general-lee-butler/