Is
Saudi Arabia the latest country
to benefit from Washington's
blind eye on nuclear weapons?
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
August 9, 2004
LONDON - In his forthcoming memoir
on his involvement in the Indian/Pakistani nuclear
relationship Strobe Talbott, the former U.S. deputy
Secretary of State, recounts the surprise and alarm that
swept through the eighth floor of the State Department
when, on May 11th 1998, the first reports came in over
CNN that India had tested a nuclear weapon. Yet one
presumes his diplomats were reading the Indian press
carefully. For example, I have in front of me two
articles dated April 8th and 15th, 1998, in the
influential Indian daily, The Statesman, that argued that
now the Indian nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata party
had come to power India going nuclear was going to happen
very quickly. The information was around for those who
had eyes and ears. It was as if Washington didn't want to
know until it had to.
Rather similarly
the reports emerging today suggesting that Saudi Arabia
may be the latest Middle Eastern country to engage in a
planning program on nuclear weapons recall a report of
the International Institute for Strategic Studies
published as long ago as 1989. This well-informed,
London-based body remarked on the then recent Saudi
purchase of Chinese CSS-2 rockets: "Missiles of such
range are difficult to justify unless they carry nuclear
weapons." "They are too elaborate and expensive to make
sense for anything else", I was told at the time.
"Controllable thrust engines, inertial guidance systems
and heat shielding put up the cost to astronomical
levels."
But Washington
didn't want to know and still doesn't want to know. Not
one senior Administration figure is talking about Saudi
Arabian nuclear weapons' plans despite the new worrying
intelligence reports. It is the same with U.S.
policy towards Israel's large stock of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. will not confirm on the record what everybody
knows- that Israel has around 200 nuclear
weapons.
Washington prefers
when that is its immediate strategic interest (albeit not
its long term one) to put its telescope to its blind eye.
It couldn't allow itself to be too agitated about India's
nuclear research because it had kept quiet for so long
about Pakistan's, its close ally. When the Soviet army
poured into Afghanistan during the Carter Administration
the U.S. suspended its nuclear non-proliferation policy
so that Pakistan was sanctions-free and could receive the
military and economic aid which the U.S. wanted it to
have. Yet everyone knew that Pakistan was developing its
nuclear weapons' capability at a fast rate. And today we
know that Pakistan's chief nuclear weapons' scientist was
running a side-show, selling nuclear technology and
equipment far and wide- to North Korea, Libya, Iran and,
now the spooks say, a "fourth customer", which can only
be Saudi Arabia.
How can Washington
be a credible force for anti-proliferation when this is
the recent historical record, doing little or nothing
until too late? Strobe Talbott gives a hair rising
ringside view of the Indian-Pakistani nuclear crisis of
1999. He reports that President Bill Clinton thought that
it brought the antagonists closer to nuclear war than the
U.S. and the Soviet Union were at the time of the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
We know too that
when Saudi Arabia bought these Chinese missiles in 1988
Israel was nervous enough to warn Saudi Arabia that it
would engage in a preemptive nuclear strike if it ever
had cause for suspicion they would be used against it.
Some close observers are still convinced that only U.S.
pressure stayed the Israeli hand in the very nervous
March and April of 1988. (Saudi Arabia, for its part,
attempted to reassure Israel by saying it acquired the
rockets for defense against Iran, not Israel.)
Diplomatically it
is very difficult for Washington to rally international
opinion behind a hard line on nuclear non-proliferation
in North Korea and Iran when its recent past performance
is so ambiguous and inconsistent.
The credibility of
the Bush Administration is further undermined by its
actions in securing "loose nukes" and near-nukes, in
Russia. Harvard professor, Graham Allison, has described
the attitude of the G8 nations towards this issue as
"lackadaisical and unfocused". Despite agreement in
principal with Russia to work together on the issue, less
plutonium and highly enriched uranium have been secured
in the two years since September 11th 2001 than the two
years before. President George Bush does not give the
issue his direct personal involvement.
Meanwhile at home,
rather than setting a good example by freezing weapons
development, the Administration has been seeking an
increase in research funding for two new kinds of nuclear
weapons.
Is hypocrisy the
tribute that vice pays to virtue? But if so where do we
go from here? Is the sauce that is good for the goose not
good for the gander?
Note for editor: 1)
Copyright Jonathan Power 2) dateline London 3) I can be
reached by e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com or by phone: +44
7785 351172.
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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written for the
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"Like
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