Time for the
West
to nuclear disarm
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments directly
to JonatPower@aol.com
October 18, 2006
LONDON - The saddle on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty has more than slipped. It has become undone. For America to carry
the world on this issue it has to become convincing. It has to demonstrate
that what it is asking others to do it is also doing itself.
Public opinion in Europe certainly, but also in much of the rest of the
world, seems to have an intuitive understanding that:
a) war over alleged nuclear weapons’ capability is hyprocrytical
whilst the U.S. (and Britain and France) is so over-armed;
b) is doubly hypocritical given the West’s long tolerance (only
relatively recently curtailed) of exporting the ingredients for making
weapons of mass destruction;
c) is triply hypocritical given the blind eye it turned to Iraq’s
use of chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds and Israel’s
manufacture of a large nuclear arsenal.
There is also a further point, perhaps too sophisticated for the man or
woman in the street - that neither Iran nor North Korea could have a logical
purpose in actually using a nuclear weapon unless they had their back
against the wall in the face of an overwhelming attack, and the only country
that could actually make such an attack is the U.S..
America has no choice but to find a way to become credible again. Moreover,
it has no choice but to look with a fresh eye at the arguments of the
nuclear dissenters. Their main point is that by possessing nuclear weapons
there is a risk that they will be used by accident or by a rogue commander.
Their second argument is that nuclear deterrence is at best an unproved
point. The Soviet Union never sought to intrude on Western territory and
had no ambitions in that direction. In its own eyes Soviet nuclear weapons
were developed only to match America’s.
The Indian/Pakistan confrontation also suggests deterrence does not work.
Both sides have continued direct conventional fighting- in the Pakistan
case using proxy guerrilla forces. Both sides seem prepared to risk nuclear
war and have moved several times to the brink, By developing nuclear weapons
both sides have given themselves more severe military and political problems
than they had before.
The only two cases where arguably nuclear weapons appear to work as a
deterrent are Israel’s vis a vis the Arab world and North Korea’s
vis a vis the U.S. Yet Israel was effectively invulnerable to a major
conventional attack before it became nuclear armed and its decision to
pursue nuclear arms had the counterproductive effect of persuading Iraq
and perhaps Iran to try to develop theirs. And North Korea is only in
such a strong position because 50,000 American troops are deployed in
an essentially static formation so close to its southern border.
The core argument of the nuclear disarmers is that the continued possession
of nuclear weapons are unnecessary and therefore immoral. General George
Lee Butler, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command (the man responsible
for putting into action a president’s order to begin a nuclear attack),
has concluded, “nuclear weapons are irrational devices. They were
rationalised and accepted as a desperate measure in the face of circumstances
that were unimaginable.”
General Charles Horner, who was the allied forces’ commander in
the first Gulf War, concludes that “the nuclear weapon is obsolete.
Even for Israel, he agues if the military replied to a chemical Scud attack
on Tel Aviv with nuclear weapons “they would lose all legitimacy
as a nation. They’d be a pariah.” Indeed, if the U.S. used
nuclear weapons, even a small one against an Iranian nuclear research
bunker, America would effectively make itself an outcast for decades to
come.
Yet against this passion is ranged popular inertia on one side and an
extraordinarily deeply embedded culture of “nuclear deterrence”
on the other. As the former West German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has
analysed it, "There is an enormous body of vested interests not only
through lobbying in Washington and Moscow but through influence on intellectuals,
on people who write books and articles in newspapers. It is very difficult
as a reader or consumer of TV to distinguish by one’s own judgement
what is led by these interests and what is led by rational conclusion.”
If ever there was a right moment to nuclear disarm this must be it. There
is little real enmity between the old superpower rivals and indeed between
both of them and up and coming China. Not since 1871-1913 has there been
so little active hostility between the big powers. This must be the time
to get a grip on the issue of big power nuclear disarmament, for without
that there is simply no credibility when dealing with the would-be nuclear
proliferators of the Third World.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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