Disarmament Diplomacy
Issue No. 41, November 1999
Editorial
Sleepwalking Towards Nuclear War
Are we sleepwalking towards nuclear war? There was momentary shock
when the US Senate rejected the CTBT, but few are out on the
streets. Among some governments' officials, there is an
acknowledgement that arms control is in trouble, but a comfortable
certainty that though they may complain, no states will actually
withdraw from the NPT. Nuclear weapons are being revalued across
the world and there is an air of official self congratulation that
there is no visible, public abolition movement to object.
The warning signs are all there. India drafts a nuclear
doctrine, while unstable Pakistan rattles its nuclear sabre behind
non-nuclear skirmishes along the borders. China has continued to
modernise and increase its arsenal. NATO displayed US technological
and military might against Yugoslavia, and now Russia is pounding
Chechnya, pausing only to tell the world not to interfere and to
remind the United States with whom it is dealing - a collapsed
superpower with a very large nuclear arsenal. Amongst all this,
Washington neglects multilateral arms control, bent on fatally
weakening the ABM Treaty in order to have unilateral freedom to
build ballistic missile defences.
The US obsession with missile defence reminds me of a scene from
a silent movie, Buster Keaton I think. Our hero would look up and
see clouds, unfurl his over-sized umbrella, and holding it
resolutely in front of his face he would walk along the road, not
seeing where he was going. Of course he fell into a lake.
Repeatedly. And it never actually rained.
The United States is over-reacting to storm clouds such as the
North Korean and Iraqi programmes and it is not looking at the
impact of its own actions on the rest of the world. There are
indeed worrying incidents of chemical weapon use, missile flight
tests and non-compliance with the NPT. Missile proliferation and
terrorism cannot and should not be ignored. But the worst-case
scenarios that seem to feed US weapons programmes are set to
nourish and even create worse threats than they can possibly
contain.
US timing is all wrong. If it pushes ahead now to amend the ABM
Treaty, the United States will deal a body blow to nuclear arms
control and the credibility and coherence of related agreements. If
the militarily most advanced country in the world is allowed to
pick and choose among the treaties it has acceded to when they
later become inconvenient, what arguments do we use to persuade
others to abide by collective arrangements for international
security? The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibited placing weapons of
mass destruction into space. How large is the step from weakening
the ABM Treaty to destroying the Outer Space Treaty if, in a few
years' time, US defence planners decide that they want nuclear
weapons in space? This really is a slippery slope.
The greatest danger comes not from the hawks pushing for new
weapons, who are, despite their financial clout, a relatively small
minority - but from the neglect of political leaders and the
complacency of the rest of us. Similarly, the threat to the
non-proliferation regime is not that countries will walk out if the
2000 NPT Review Conference goes badly, but of a gradual erosion of
confidence, as more countries hedge their bets. Slowly but surely
that would kill the NPT, indefinite extension or not.
In the Cold War, the constant dread of nuclear war was a fact of
life. After it ended, many people believed that nuclear weapons
were things of the past that were being reduced, controlled and
gradually eliminated. So they could spend more time worrying about
other important problems like human rights, poverty and
globalisation. Public movements are always cyclical, reacting to
threats, dangers and opportunities as they come to the fore. As
France discovered when it resumed testing in 1995, military
decision-makers should not mistake the quiet now for agreement to
revive nuclear planning. Nuclear weapons are still an accident or
military mistake waiting to happen, only now more countries want
them. That realisation should bring people out on the streets
again. But they don't see it, because they still think their
governments are dealing with the problem.
In its sombre analysis of present dangers, one of the most
important insights of the 1999 Tokyo Forum was to reject the cosy
belief of nuclear planners that they can keep their weapons and
'manage' proliferation. The choice is much starker: "between the
assured dangers of proliferation and the challenges of
disarmament".
- REJ
© 1999 The Acronym Institute.
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