The United States' decision to pursue the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons is wrong. At a time when Washington is trying to convince other nations that nuclear-weapons programs should be abandoned, the U.S. move suggests that such weapons are useful after all. It is one more blow to the much maligned Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime: Rather than shrinking its arsenal as promised in the treaty, the U.S. stock of weapons will grow -- and the new weapons are designed to be even more usable. It is difficult to conceive of a decision that more completely contradicts U.S. interests and those of the entire world.

Last week, the U.S. Congress approved a $27.3 billion spending bill for 2004 that includes $6 million to research small, low-yield nuclear weapons. The vote also authorized $15 million for more research into the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a nuclear weapon that is designed to penetrate deeply buried underground bunkers. The vote lifted a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons. The bill now goes to the Senate where passage is virtually assured and then to U.S. President George W. Bush. It is not a blank check, however: The administration must go back to Congress for another vote before development work on the weapons can actually begin.

Strategists argue that new weapons are needed to bolster deterrence, since the destructive capability of old nuclear weapons serves to dissuade any government from using them. Although a typical U.S. nuclear weapon can be delivered within about 100 meters of its target, it must produce a blast equivalent to about 15 kilotons of TNT to destroy a bunker target. Radiation from such a blast would spread over an 8-km radius.