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CRS-9
The 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives
In September and October 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev sharply altered their nations deployments of
nonstrategic nuclear weapons.12 Each announced unilateral, but reciprocal initiatives
that marked the end of many elements of their Cold War nuclear arsenals.
U.S. Initiative. On September 27, 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush
announced that the United States would withdraw all land-based tactical nuclear
weapons (those that could travel less than 300 miles) from overseas bases and all sea-
based tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. surface ships, submarines, and naval
aircraft.'3 Under these measures the United States began dismantling approximately
2,150 warheads from the land-based delivery systems, including 850 warheads for
Lance missiles and 1,300 artillery shells. It also withdrew about 500 weapons
normally deployed aboard surface ships and submarines, and planned to eliminate
around 900 B-57 depth bombs, which had been deployed on land and at sea, and the
weapons for land-based naval aircraft.'5 Furthermore, in late 1991, NATO decided
to reduce by about half the number of weapons for nuclear-capable aircraft based in
Europe, which led to the withdrawal of an additional 700 U.S. air-delivered nuclear
weapons.
The United States implemented these measures very quickly. Nonstrategic
nuclear weapons were removed from bases in Korea by the end of 1991 and Europe
by mid-1992. The Navy had withdrawn nuclear weapons from its surface ships,
submarines, and forward bases by the mid-1992.16 The warhead dismantlement
process has moved more slowly, taking most of the 1990s to complete for some
weapons, and with some work still to be done on others, but this is due to the limits
on capacity at the Pantex Plant in Texas, where the work is done.
The first Bush Administration decided to withdraw these weapons for several
reasons. First, the threat the weapons were to deter - Soviet and Warsaw Pact
attacks in Europe - had diminished with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989.
Further, the military utility of the land-based weapons had declined as the Soviet
Union pulled its forces eastward, beyond the range of these weapons. The utility of
the sea-based weapons had also declined as a result of changes in U.S. warfighting12 The speeches outlining these initiatives can be found in Larson, Jeffrey A. and Kurt J.
Klingenberger, editors, Controlling Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons. Obstacles and
Opportunities, United States Air Force, Institute for National Security Studies, July 2001,
pp 273-283.
13 President Bush also announced that he would remove from alert all U.S. strategic bombers
and 450 Minuteman II ICBMs that were to be eliminated under the START Treaty. He also
cancelled several modernization programs for strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.
'" Joshua Handler, in Alexander and Millar, Tactical Nuclear Weapons, pp 21-22.
15 The United States maintained the capability to return sea-based nuclear weapons to
aircraft carriers and submarines until this policy was changed through the Nuclear Posture
Reviews of 1994 and 2001.16 Joshua Handler, in Alexander and Millar, Tactical Nuclear Weapons, p. 22.
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Woolf, Amy F. Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, report, September 9, 2004; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs6104/m1/12/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.