PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

On nuclear weapons . . .
by Andy Horbal Wednesday, Mar. 26, 2003 at 7:30 PM
arh6@pitt.edu arh6@pitt.edu

The threat of nuclear holocaust has not gone away . . .

After reading about both India and Pakistan conducting nuclear tests last week I found this on the BBC's website. It is written by Dr. Patricia Lewis, the Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

"In the 1960s when some of you (or some of your parents) were wearing flowers in San Francisco, President Kennedy was worried that within a few years there would be 20-30 countries with nuclear weapons. So in 1968 in Geneva, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States negotiated a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five countries that already had the bomb, namely China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA. Today there are 186 countries in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Three countries have remained outside the agreement. India and Pakistan have openly declared and tested their bombs. Israel too has never signed the treaty but remains cagey about its nuclear weapons capability and now all attention is on North Korea. North Korea threatened to pull out in 1993, US pressure and inducements halted them, but in January this year, the isolated regime announced its withdrawal from the treaty.
The first major blow to the treaty came in 1991 when, following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the subsequent Gulf War, UN inspectors uncovered a secret nuclear weapons programme that was much further advanced than previously thought. They had a working design and the material. Luckily the United Nations got rid of the material but obviously the knowledge of how to make a bomb still resides in the brains of Iraqi scientists.

Iraq had used chemical weapons in 1988 in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurds in the north of the country -the terrible effects from which Kurdish people are still suffering. The UN discovered that Iraq had a major chemical weapons and missile programme and a highly secret biological weapons programme.

Now the important thing to know about the Non-Proliferation Treaty is that it is a package of bargains. Bargain number one is that the non-nuclear weapon states (now numbering 180) agree not to develop nuclear weapons and, in exchange, the nuclear weapon states agree to negotiate away their nuclear weapons. In 1995 and 2000, they went further and made an unequivocal commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.

However, things have not worked out like that. The nuclear weapons states are not complying with their nuclear disarmament promises. Not only have the US, Russia and China done very little in the last few years to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons they have but now the US government is considering the development of new, bunker-busting "useable" nuclear weapons. This would undermine all nuclear disarmament efforts and even further damage the Treaty. Cynicism has set in and the "haves" versus "have-nots" tension is increasing.

The fight over Iraq is about possessing weapons of mass destruction. Yet the United States has them too. OK, so they are legally allowed to possess them and Iraq is not. But the legal obligations of the US and its four partners on the Security Council to eliminate their weapons of mass destruction must be complied with too - otherwise what moral authority do they have? For how long can the United States say that other countries can't have nuclear weapons whilst they clearly have no intention of giving up their own?

Another big problem is the unequal treatment of cheaters. Right now the world is faced with two crises over weapons of mass destruction. The first is Iraq and its non-compliance with treaties and with Chapter VII Security Council resolutions. The second, is North Korea, its non-compliance and its continuing development of nuclear weapons, long range missiles and goodness knows what else.

In the case of Iraq, the US and others are enforcing the commitments through military action, even if it results in escalation to regional war and longer-term problems. However, in North Korea's case, the US, Japan and South Korea attempted to buy-off the dictatorship back in 1993 and there is talk of doing the same thing again today. Experts say it is because North Korea probably already has nuclear weapons - Iraq does not yet have a fully-fledged capability. This is nuclear blackmail. And, as everyone knows, once you give in to blackmail there is no stop to it.

In the meantime, other nuclear wannabes are looking, listening and learning. After Kosovo and Afghanistan they have seen the unbeatable force of the US and they see that nuclear weapons could be an equalizer to US military power. Political scientists call this the theory of 'asymmetrical warfare', we at the UN call it a disaster. Because governments can see from the cases of India, Pakistan and Israel, that for a state with nuclear weapons ambition, it would have been better to stay outside the treaty. India and Pakistan have in many respects benefited internationally from their audacity (although come a full-blown war in South Asia, they will come to regret their nuclear posturing). They also see that if you are a close ally of the US, such as Israel, you can get away with just about anything. From the case of North Korea they see that breaking out from the NPT once you have nuclear weapons is a route that will give you a great deal of bargaining power. Iraq's big mistake was to have invaded Kuwait in 1990. This led to the UN inspections and the discovery of the illegal weapons programmes, which has in turn led to the situation we are in now. If Iraq had bided its time and invaded Kuwait only once it had nuclear weapons and withdrawn from the treaty, then we would be in a very different situation today.

Does this mean that I'm advocating a US-led attack on North Korea?

No!

What I'm saying is this: There are two big issues with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. One is universality - that means everyone should be in it including India, Pakistan and Israel - without their nuclear weapons. The second is compliance. That means that all states must comply with all their obligations. That means that neither Iraq nor North Korea should be allowed to get away with it and it also means that the five nuclear weapons states who have a special responsibility for international peace and security must be seen to be serious about eliminating their stockpiles.

As every parent knows, "do as I say not as I do" never works. We have to mean it when we promise something, otherwise we cannot expect others to keep their promises indefinitely. My fear is that President Kennedy's predictions are beginning to come true. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty will not have fulfilled its promise to eradicate nuclear weapons from the planet, rather it will only have delayed the inevitable. Do we really want a world where countries in regions of crisis are armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction? That is certainly the case in South Asia. Soon we will see North East Asia and the Middle East going the same way. Unless we finally get serious.

Arms control is not a panacea. It will not solve all the world's problems. It will not solve difficult security situations. Nuclear disarmament however is a necessary - not sufficient, but necessary - condition for peace. Global peace and regional peace I liken it to taking away matches from a petrol soaked house. Right now we have three inflammable situations. All three are at risk from a nuclear conflagration. Is this what we want? This will only get worse if we don't tackle the big issues of arms control. No, we can't put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. But we are grown ups. We can control our behaviour. We can enforce the law, but to enforce the law effectively we have to obey it ourselves. Let's do that now before it's too late.

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