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TechnoratiThe New Nuclear Risk
Global disarmament must start at the top - with the US and Russia. But first we need to update the non-proliferation treaty
Humans love to suppress abstract dangers. They react only after they get their fingers burned. In handling nuclear risks, however, we can hardly get away with such childlike behaviour.
To begin with, the old system of nuclear deterrence, which has survived particularly in the US and Russia since the cold war's end, still involves lots of risks and dangers. While the international public largely ignores this fact, the risks remain.
To be sure, in the 1990's the US and Russia reduced their nuclear arsenals from 65,000 to approximately 26,000 weapons. But this number is still almost unimaginable and beyond any rational level needed for deterrence. Moreover, there are another 1,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of other nuclear states.
A second cause for worry is that the world is poised to enter a new nuclear age that threatens to be even more dangerous and expensive than the cold war era of mutually assured destruction. Indeed, the outlines of this new nuclear age are already visible: the connection between terrorism and nuclear weapons; a nuclear-armed North Korea; the risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran's nuclear program; a new definition of state sovereignty as "nuclear sovereignty", accompanied by a massive increase in the number of small and medium-sized nuclear states; possible collapse of public order in nuclear Pakistan; the illegal proliferation of military nuclear technology; the legal proliferation of civilian nuclear technology and an increase in the number of "civilian" nuclear states; the nuclearisation of space, triggering an arms race among large nuclear powers.
Important political leaders, especially in the two biggest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, know today's existing risks and tomorrow's emerging ones all too well. Yet nothing is being done to control, contain, or eliminate them. On the contrary, the situation is worsening.
Vital pillars of the old arms-control and anti-proliferation regime have either been destroyed - as was the case with the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty - or substantially weakened, as with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). Responsibility for this lies largely with the Bush administration, which, by terminating the ABM treaty, not only weakened the international control systems for nuclear weapons, but also sat on its hands when confronted with the NPT's imminent collapse.
At the beginning of the 21st century, proliferation of military nuclear technology is one of the major threats to humanity, particularly if this technology falls into terrorists' hands. The use of nuclear weapons by terrorists would not only result in a major humanitarian tragedy, but also would most likely move the world beyond the threshold for actually waging a nuclear war. The consequences would be horrific.
Nearly equally worrisome is the nuclear redefinition of state sovereignty because it will not only lead to a large number of small, politically unstable nuclear powers, but will also increase the risk of proliferation at the hands of terrorists. Pakistan would, most likely, no longer be an isolated case.
An international initiative for the renewal and improvement of the international control regime, led by both big nuclear powers, is urgently needed to meet these and all other risks of the new nuclear age. For, if disarmament is to become effective, the signal must come from the top - the US and Russia. Here the commitment to disarmament, as agreed in the NPT, is of prime importance.
The NPT - a bedrock of peace for more than three decades - is based on a political agreement between nuclear and non-nuclear states: the latter abstain from obtaining nuclear weapons while the former destroy their arsenals. Unfortunately, only the first part of this agreement was realised (though not completely), while the second part still awaits fulfilment.
The NPT remains indispensable and needs urgent revision. However, this central pillar of international proliferation control is on the brink of collapse. The most recent review conference in New York, in May 2005, ended virtually without any result.
The essential defect of the NPT is now visible in the nuclear dispute between Iran and the United Nations Security Council: the treaty permits the development of all nuclear components indispensable for military use - particularly uranium enrichment - so long as there is no outright nuclear weapons program. This means that in emerging nuclear countries only one single political decision is required to "weaponise" a nuclear program. This kind of "security" is not sufficient.
Another controversial issue also has also come to the fore in connection with the current nuclear conflict with Iran: discrimination-free access to nuclear technology. Solving this problem will require the internationalisation of access to civilian nuclear technology, along with filling the security gap under the existing NPT and substantially more far-reaching monitoring of all states that want to be part of such a system.
Leaders around the world know the dangers of a new nuclear age; they also know how to minimise them. But the political will to act decisively is not there, because the public does not regard nuclear disarmament and arms control as a political priority.
This must change. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not questions of the past. They need to be addressed today if they are not to become the most dangerous threats tomorrow..
In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2008.
Joschka Fischer, a leader of the Green Party for nearly 20 years, was Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. A leader in the Green Party for nearly 20 years, he is now a visiting professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
16 Comments so far
Show AllMy "rich" buddy's folks did, but the damn thing was always filling up with water (never had a chance to see more than the light blue colored cover in his front yard).
I don't recall feeling the least bit better, with either the duck & cover (kiss 'ur butt g'bye) nor the prospect of someone "living" through it. Actually, I don't recall being very worried by it at all, but a few years afterwards my folks were canvassing, ralleying, and marching -- for civil rights, the war, and equal housing rights, and the big event '68 DNC.
With my Mom being a geologist taking me on rock hunting trips to strip coal mine refuse piles (for fern fossils) and the above political stuff - I didn't have the usual weekends of my peers to talk about.
Perhaps FAMILY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE might become the new "in" thing to do
Namaste
alaskamaid,
I'm 58 years old. I remember when I was 10 years old in 1960 BEGGING my parents to build a fallout shelter in the basement. They wouldn't even talk about it, just like you said in your last paragraph.
-- kent shaw
Some years ago I found a book called "By the Bomb's Early Light" -- a collection of essays written between 1945 and 1950 or so -- may be available through used book search services.
Very prescient and eloquent writing, clearly the contributors grasped our unfolding dilemma right away. It almost seems that since then we have been dumbed down by all the radiation we've been exposed to. One of the most important points in the book was made by the writer who said that the most dangerous time was not now (meaning then), or in the near future (our past) -- the most dangerous time would be fifty or more years down the road (our now), when a new generation had grown up used to this threat, and we had all become blase' about it. So true.
In discussion in a class I'm taking, the twenty-somethings have no idea how my generation felt as kids about the imminence of nuclear war. One girl compared it to being afraid of tornadoes, and she actually came closer than the rest. It is only those of us who actually 'ducked and covered' who are really aware of the horror of the whole situation.
One friend of mine remembers that her school closed for the day after nuclear attack drills. She was in first grade. So she would walk home alone, wondering in her mind of the world was still there or if everything was vaporized and she was just imagining that it was still there. (This was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I remember equally clearly).
None of the adults ever talked about it, in that sense it was a kind of child abuse. At least a tornado is a fear acknowledged and shared by the entire community. Nuclear talk was verboten. It still is.
Yes, sir're bob (I mean Kent).
But of course the strategy of atomic war is the decapitation of the enemies command and control centers, so as to prevent a counter-attack (hoping against the deadly doomsday revenge effect).
It's just a minor side effect that it also cures head lice, as there likely would be other side effects …
namaste, I hope you detected the raw, dripping sarcasm intended in my "safe and effective" comment above.
Kent Shaw -- Along those same lines, I've heard that decapitation is great for controlling head lice.
There is no way to put the genii back in the bottle. The only hopeful fact here is that the amount of industrial activity needed to weaponize nuclear material is very significant and is not easily concealed.
As many here keep reminding us, if you want peace, seek justice.
btw: in Her Fischer's creds I didn't see mentioned that he ran against Angela Merkel for the Chancelorship. Am I mistaken about that?
wilmoor - it would take arsenals the size of the US, or Russia, to annihilate humans. A few nuclear strikes from Pakisatan, Iran, Israel, India, North Korea, or terrorist groups that might get their hands on former Soviet nukes (or even hundreds of strikes, which are beyond their current capacities) won't wipe us off the planet, but may precipitate geopolitical chain reactions which would disrupt fossil fueled Business As Usual - e.g., war, famine, pestilence(bioweapons), and global economic recession - the 21st century Four Horsemen. If this reduced mankind's carbon footprint enough to ameliorate AGW, this would be a Good Thing. Except for all the dying, of course.
John Sullivan: "From the beginning, nuclear weapons have been in the hands of terrorists."
What else could you call Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Neither city had any military significance and Japan was already severely beaten. This was nothing more than a terror attack used to show Joe Stalin he better back off re: Japan.
technophile55 - we might not have time to become an endangered species. We'll just become a suddenly annihilated one.
So many years ago I no longer remember them, I heard somewhere that unwanted hydrogen bombs had been disposed of in some deep part of the ocean.
I don't know if that's true or not, but I've ever since thought about those bombs. Having learned what the bottom of the ocean is - the constant plates shifting and volcanic activity taking place, I've had some pretty good nightmares of those discarded bombs somehow starting a chain reaction that would split the earth.
There is so much nuclear waste, and so many nuclear weapons around the world and more coming along. I see mankind's future as pretty hopeless.
I believe that the Bush Administration WANTS nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism in order to invoke martial law in the US; the same way they wanted an excuse to invade Iraq (what do you really think was planned in Cheney's secret "energy" policy sessions?) which they got by ignoring FBI reports of terrorists learning to fly but not land planes pre 9/11. Part of this nuclear plan was the wrecking of the CIA antiproliferation program by outing Valerie Plame (only a fool would believe this was just political payback to Joe Wilson). I'm a radical environmentalist who sees disaster in the coming environmental catastrophe triggered by anthropogenic global warming, and I think Bush's nuclear terrorism gambit will backfire like his inept invasion of Iraq. The effect of a few nuke attacks will have a disproportionally negative impact on centralized, linear, critically interdependent human civilization than on decentralized, fault tolerant, multispecies ecosystems. Hastening the collapse of fossil fuel dependent society will do more to ameliorate AGW than all likely political efforts, despite Al Gore's publicizing of the problems. Unfortunately, this will hasten perhaps a few billion untimely human deaths; fortunately, we're not an endangered species.
want peace? seek justice.
Nukes WILL be used, eventually. Why not? They're just big bombs, and they don't spread any more radiation around than has already been spreat about in Iraq with no ill effects. Nuclear weapons are SAFE and EFFECTIVE.
"At the beginning of the 21st century, proliferation of military nuclear technology is one of the major threats to humanity, particularly if this technology falls into terrorists' hands."
From the beginning, nuclear weapons have been in the hands of terrorists.
Nuclear disarmaent and non-proliferation have been the most important issues in the world since Aug.6,1945 and will remain so. In addition to their tendency to feel apathetic about abstract dangers, the humans also have a short attention span and will tune out the boy crying, "Wolf!" if he goes on for too long.