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The
Americans are Shooting Themselves in the Foot with
Nuclear Weapons
By JONATHAN
POWER
Feb 9, 2000
LONDON- Couldn't the contestants in the U.S.
presidential primaries toss us in the rest of the world
just one crumb? For example, in this foreign policy
starved contest, a serious discussion about whether they
are planning, if elected, to make a unilateral abrogation
of one of most important international treaties in
existence, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. It
was negotiated and signed on behalf of the U.S. and the
Soviet Union by presidents Nixon and Brezhnev and
described ever since by presidents on both sides as "the
cornerstone of the strategic relationship".
One would perhaps think that the electors of the
world's single superpower might press the candidates on
this point, not just because a good part of the rest of
the world is hanging on an answer, but because it will
profoundly affect their own country's relationship not
just with Russia but with China and Europe. Indeed, one
could add with India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Israel -
all the other nuclear or would-be nuclear powers. At the
moment it looks as if the American electors are hell bent
on allowing their country to shoot itself in the foot
with nuclear weapons.
But the fact is the issue is barely mentioned. Neither
has there been much talk about the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty shot down in flames last year by the Senate,
despite Vice-President Al Gore's promise that he would
immediately pick up the ball and run with it. Moreover,
this was supposed to be a solid promise made to Tony
Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, who'd
personally campaigned for it.
We all know there is a peculiar insouciance about Bill
Clinton's attitude to nuclear disarmament. Long gone is
the fervour that was brought to the subject by presidents
as disparate as Carter and Reagan. Clinton has spent
little energy either on engaging the Russians or on
educating American opinion on the need to rid the world
of weapons developed for a purpose that no longer exists,
the need to deter communist aggrandizement. Without the
leadership of the Cold War's victor, the rest of the
world, from Britain to Iran, from Israel to Pakistan, has
blithely continued on its long-laid tracks of justifying
its own nuclear ambitions, without regard to either the
consequences, the morality or its own real needs.
Such carelessness must not be allowed by the next U.S.
administration to become provocation. And it would quite
simply be provocation of the most short-sighted and
counterproductive kind to break up a treaty that the
Russian people have been bottle fed by successive U.S.
and Soviet/Russian administrations to believe it was the
one thing that made a nuclear holocaust unlikely.
The ABM treaty says in effect: "We both agree not to
protect our cities against nuclear attack. Therefore we
know a nuclear exchange would be a calamity. Therefore it
won't happen." Once that treaty is abrogated, as the U.S.
starts to try (it cannot, but that is another matter) to
protect its cities with a so-called missile shield, the
Russians, already reeling from defeat in the Cold War,
followed by the expansion of Nato almost up to their
doorstep, will be easily convinced, since they cannot
afford a similar shield, that the U.S., even if doesn't
try to bump Russia off, will use this to its political
advantage.
And for what? What do American policymakers from Bill
Clinton to George Bush junior think they will get out of
this? What is it that makes them think they are right,
when even Washington's closest allies in Europe think
they are wrong? It is trumpeted as a defence not against
Russia or China, the traditional enemies who are no
longer supposed to be enemies, but as a protection from
North Korea, Iran and Iraq who, it is said, within a few
years will have the ability to lob a missile at least to
Alaska, and perhaps one day to Chicago or Seattle.
This begs a whole lot of questions. Question one: are
these countries so suicidal they have no fear of revenge?
Question two: if they are fearless, then what are they
waiting for? Why do they bother with developing, if they
can, a long range missile? Wouldn't a bomb in suitcase
smuggled ashore on one of the many boats running drugs
into America suffice?
Question three: Why is the U.S. so sure that these
countries have such evil intent? Its diplomatic efforts
with North Korea have progressed so amazingly well that
the U.S. is now considering taking the country off its
list of terroristic countries. Iran is just about to
elect a liberal-minded parliament in a free vote and
should be far easier to woo than North Korea. After all,
its moment of confrontation with the U.S. over the
hostages is now a generation old. As for Iraq, deterrence
and sanctions take a heavy toll, and will continue to,
inspections or no inspections.
The truth is there are two and only two likely nuclear
flash points in the world we inhabit - and that is likely
to remain so for the forseeable future. One, and the most
likely, is Pakistan and India. The pity is one can say
with more or less absolute certainty that if the U.S. had
made nuclear disarmament its priority at the Cold War's
end neither of these two countries would have gone openly
nuclear. The second flash point is the U.S. and Russia.
The overriding danger, however, is not an intentional
nuclear war, as it was in the old days, it is an
accidental one. So many experts, from former U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara to the general formerly in
charge of all U.S. nuclear weapons, George Lee Butler,
have warned of the grave seriousness of this danger, one
that worsens as the missiles and their control systems
physically deteriorate in Russia.
If Ronald Reagan had got his way with his subordinates
at his summit in Reykjavik with Mikhail Gorbachev,
massive, large-scale, nuclear disarmament would have even
begun in the Cold War era. One could imagine, if he were
well, how scandalized he would be by the present drift of
U.S. opinion. Tragically, none of the smaller men who
have succeeded him or are likely to, (although George
Bush senior did have one spell of sensible unilateral
nuclear disarmament when he pulled America's short range
missiles out of Europe), have the stature within their
own society to take such a courageous step. And now, by
seemingly being prepared to torpedo one of the great
breakwaters of the old era, they appear intent on opening
the dykes to a new nuclear age, one perhaps even more
dangerous than the last. All without an honest and open
debate.
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN
POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and
e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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