Defeat of the
Test Ban Treaty and the Coup in Pakistan Marks the Path to
Nuclear War
By JONATHAN
POWER
Oct. 13. 1999
LONDON- President Bill Clinton's inability to win enough
Senate votes to win ratification of the American-sponsored
Test Ban Treaty is one more milestone on the way to
inevitable nuclear conflict. The fact that the decision to
concede defeat was taken with the knowledge, following the
coup in Pakistan, that a military regime, answerable to no
civilian authority, is now in direct control of one
country's nuclear weapons is but one more indication that
U.S. congressional opinion is dangerously out of touch with
the pace of world events. It sends a clear signal to the
world at large that the U.S. is not committed to nuclear
arms control, even when it works in its favour. America, we
all know, is capable of reacting after a disaster, but it
appears dangerously bereft of an instinctive, prescient
wisdom that might preclude it.
The use of nuclear weapons remains unlikely between the
U.S. and Russia, but today the chance of them being used in
a war between Pakistan and India is even higher than it was
earlier in the year when, during their fighting over
Kashmir, it seemed to some observers they were playing with
nuclear matches. There also remains the possibility of the
use of a nuclear weapons in the Middle East or by mafia
elements who may get their hands on material and knowledge
from Russia's disintegrating nuclear weapons'
laboratories.
Nuclear proliferation has now gone so far, and the window
of opportunity that presented itself at the Cold War's end
to take radical steps to wind back the nuclear clock has now
all but closed, that it is difficult to argue with
conviction that time is any longer on our side. What should
have been done, as General George Lee Butler, formerly
commander of U.S. Strategic (Nuclear) Forces, has argued,
was for the U.S. to have seized, from its position of
strength at Cold War's end, the moral high ground and to
have led a crusade, which necessarily would have had to have
many unilateral, self-denying, ingredients, to rid the world
of nuclear weapons.
Today I find that I have enormous sympathy for those,
mainly on the right in America, who are pushing for the U.S.
to build itself as quickly as possible a defensive shield
that can stop an incoming missile from a rogue regime -
though not a massive nuclear superpower attack- in its
tracks.
The trouble, however, is not the instinctive desire for
protection, it is the ability to secure it. That quite
simply is an impossible quest. A missile shield will not
help against a suitcase bomb parked in Grand Central
Station. And if the U.S. cannot stop countless small boats
and planes landing drugs on American soil, why does it think
it can intercept the arrival of a nuclear bomb that could
arrive just the same way?
It is, in fact, this awareness of the odds that persuaded
General Butler to ask if "history will judge that the Cold
war was a sort of Trojan Horse, whereby nuclear weapons were
smuggled into the life of the world and made an acceptable
part of the way it works?" We have been led, he says,"to
think about the unthinkable, justify the unjustifiable and
rationalise the irrational".
Yet for every General Butler who now sees the folly of
the U.S. clinging to nuclear weapons, there is a Bill
Clinton - a politician in power or about to be in power-
who, while his brain says one thing does another. Nothing
illustrates this more than Clinton's remark 15 months ago
after Pakistan and India first tested their nuclear bombs,
when he said,"I cannot believe that we are about to start
the twenty first century by having the subcontinent repeat
the worst mistakes of the twentieth when we know it is not
necessary to peace, to security, to prosperity, to national
greatness or national fulfilment".
But what has Mr Clinton done to reverse the American
pysche that deeply believes for all the reasons he
publically scorned that it is absolutely necesssary to hold
on to its nuclear armoury, even after the end of the Cold
War?
The Test Ban Treaty, once the idealistic dream of
President John Kennedy was meant as a tool for stopping the
nuclear arms race in its tracks. Forty years on, after
labyrinth negociations, it has become, in its post Cold War
text, not much more than a subterfuge for making it
difficult for the new nuclear powers - India and Pakistan in
particular - to develop the sophistication of their still
relatively basic nuclear stockpile. Testing is absolutely
necessary at this stage for minutarisation and nose-cone
development, whereas the U.S. and the other established
powers can maintain their commanding lead over everyone else
by computor simulation.
The fact that the Senate Republicans have scuppered the
treaty is nothing more than reflexive hostilty to the
Democratic Administration. In real terms it penalises
America by giving succour to those countries which want to
go their own way.
Nuclear arms control and eventual disarmament, once the
centre-piece of American foreign policy under presidents as
diverse as Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan, have become
the interest of a dwindling minority. Neither Clinton nor
his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, have ever given
the impression of being remotely interested in staking out a
serious radical position and following it through with a
sustained education of public opinion.
If it were not for the disintegration of the Russian
nuclear armoury through lack of maintenance and
replenishment we would have to conclude that the disarmament
situation is all but stalled. The Second Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty signed in 1993 remains unratified by the
Russian Duma, a hostage first to the Republican Chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms who took
all the momentum out of it, and to the Russian communist and
nationalist parliamentarians who, for their own reasons,
took a cue from him.
To break this impasse is a must. A year ago senior
Pentagon officials let it be known that they were prepared
to advocate unilateral cuts in the American armoury, at
least to match the de facto cuts in Russia. Again, because
of pressure from Senator Helms and his colleagues the White
House has refused to give a lead on this.
In normal times one would expect the coup in Pakistan to
wake up those who somehow think the nuclear status quo is
liveable with. But such is the degree of partisan fervour in
the U.S., rational thinking comes second to dangerous
schizophrenia. Nuclear weapons always were and now are more
than ever the world's greatest threat. We missed nuclear war
by a hair's breadth not once in the Cold War, but at least
half a dozen times. Today the odds are even worst. And the
American president and U.S. Senate, each in their own way
oblivious to their responsibility, only think about
impossible schemes for protecting America from
Armageddon.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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