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Technorati40 Years Later, Nuclear States Still Haven't Kept Promises
This year is full to bursting with remembrances of the many historic events that took place during the epochal year of 1968: The Tet offensive in Vietnam. The assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The melee at the Chicago Democratic Convention. And, on Christmas Eve, the flight of Apollo 8 from the Earth to the moon, bringing humanity its first glimpse of our single, borderless, breathtaking planet, lonely and fragile and whole, suspended among the blazing stars.
Yet the 1968 anniversary that we celebrate today may have consequences greater than any of these. Forty years ago today, in Washington, London and Moscow, world leaders signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The grand bargain of the NPT was that the non-nuclear weapon states agreed never to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapon states agreed eventually to get rid of theirs.
No, that is not a misprint. On July 1, 1968, our government committed itself to negotiate the elimination of its entire nuclear arsenal - and, with the other nuclear weapon states, to abolish nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth forever.
Indeed, the nuclear weapon states have repeatedly restated their intention to fulfill that promise. The treaty entered into force in 1970. At the 25-year NPT Review Conference in 1995, the nations committed again "to systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons." At the 30-year NPT Review Conference in 2000, the commitment was reiterated. And the World Court concluded unanimously that the NPT had created "an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects."
And so the great issue facing the NPT regime today is how much longer the "have-nots" will keep their end of the bargain if the "haves" do not even move toward fulfilling theirs. The evidence of recent history - and common sense - is not promising.
The Bush administration has concentrated enormous diplomatic firepower on keeping North Korea and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. However, at the same time, the administration is proceeding to build something called a "reliable replacement warhead" that will eventually replace every nuclear warhead category in the U.S. arsenal. And during its first year in office, in its "Nuclear Posture Review," it set in motion plans to deploy a new long-range missile to deliver nuclear weapons in 2020, a new submarine to deliver nuclear weapons in 2030, and a new long-range heavy bomber to deliver nuclear weapons in 2040 - just in time for the 2045 centennial of the dawn of the atomic age.
We may, in the next decade or so, see the fulfillment of the NPT's grand bargain, and the elimination, at last, of every nuclear weapon from the face of the Earth. Alternatively, we may see the nuclear weapon states continue indefinitely to stall. If they do, several non-nuclear weapon states will almost certainly give up on the NPT bargain, and will set us on the road toward 10, 15 or 25 nuclear weapon states.
That will provide that many more opportunities for a nuclear warhead to find its way into the hands of a nonstate nuclear terrorist. Or for a hot political crisis between nuclear-armed adversaries to spin wildly out of control. Or for some rogue military officer to push the nuclear button out of malevolence or mental unbalance. Or for a nuclear warhead to be launched utterly by accident. (Astonishingly, experts believe this remains a real possibility, even for the United States or Russia). Or ... well, name your own scenario for Armageddon.
The basic choice remains, as Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell put it in 1955, "stark and dreadful and inescapable" - a world with dozens of nuclear weapon states, or the alternative of a nuclear weapon-free world. A world with a few nuclear "haves" and a great many nuclear "have-nots" cannot forever endure.
Tad Daley is writing fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
4 Comments so far
Show AllGee, only a few comments on this important subject? Guess it's just to heavy. In the city I grew up in, St. Paul, in the heart of the city there was a seven way intersection called "seven corners." There were accidents there but never the be all and end all accident where you had the most aggressive speeding drunk driver in the biggest vehicle coming from all sides into one horrendous city shaking crash. It just wasn't in the destiny for St. Paul and that intersection to have such a massive accident.
Fast forward to 2008 and the world seems ready for the mother of all crashes with crazy aggressive drunken energy coming from all seven directions on a collision course towards the obliteration of our beloved home/planet.
There's war and the politicians and profiters that accompany
this dreaded plague spewing hate and tainted $$ wherever they go.
There's the whisper of depression in the air of america as it's economy has been wiped and hyper stimulated so many times that it can't answer the bell for the 15th round. Even with drugs like crystal-meth for the working class and new Iphones for the managers and slashed rate-cuts that makes the $ bleed into emptiness. Now the bleeding is seeping out and contaminating other countries as the world shudders under the heavy burden of the beast of capitalism.
Global warming hovers like a vulture over the earth waiting to reclaim the land from the prodigal upstart technological man, with all his wasteful and exploitative bad habits. We have cut, drained, dug, burned, poisoned and entombed our own nest to the point of premature burial. The earth cry's out with violent weather, floods, forest fires, drought, crop failure, disease and we top off this black magic feast with our own tempest of nuclear annihilation as a diabolical Korvorkian desert. Oh, the sweet smell of death in the morning as we try and checkmate our own gods.
If mankind had any sense upon the first witness of this mushroom monster back in 1945 we would have turned in our technological toys and retreated to those dimly lit caves with their shadowy figures flickering magically on the walls and retooled our whole "unplanned" agenda for the future. Every aspect of this atomic monster is a faustian nightmare, from the initial pollution of the ore tailings, to the various stages of processing, until we birth a menagerie of monsters so freaky that even a healthy Steve Irwin wouldn't touch one with a mile long pole. Now we have the super secret atomic power, the mind bending nuclear weapons that would make the devil blush, the depleted uranium that would send a midnight vampire squiring home to his coffin and shut the lid and of course the scatological ref-fuse with a half life of 10,000 years, which if enough is produced provides no room for life at all.
Why don't we all nominate ourselves for the Nobel peace prize and stop this nonsense immediately. Let the doves of peace fly to a thousand neighborhoods and fornicate with any lover who opens his soul. Lets open our arms and embrace a polar bear just because it took nature a million years to make one and his purpose must be more then just to sell cold beer. Lets change religions for one day every month and remember that god has thousand first names and a billion last names.... you do the math. Lets find bush/chaney guilty of every crime know to man.... and let them go if they'll kiss a gay albino in San Francisco at midnight on January 20, 2009 on national television.
Iran supports FISSBAN, we do not
It seems to me that climate changes are going to make the "safe" storage of nuclear ANYTHING less secure. The nation that has built up a supply of available poisonous weapons may find itself the beneficiary of lethal leakage(s).
The answers to this very serious problem does not lie with the USA. They have lost any credibility these past forty years from one foolish misuse of power after another. One fool after another in a "leadership" position, and even more "revisionist history" passed off as lessons for the future. This latest fiasco in Iraq is but one example, that may prove to deliver the fatal blow to the USA's monopoly on power. They certainly have shown themselves to be a rouge nation with a very high degree of criminality and potential for destruction of others---especially the innocent .
The distinct possibility that one or two or a few powerful governments with the ultimate firepower to destroy on an unimaginable level has not been the answer. Now that Israel is the only mid east power* with Nuclear capabilities the possibilities of their use have increased, while the unrest has as well.
Would it not be more sensible to see that all powers have these weapons so that their use will most likely not occur, if the user---is assured that they will receive the same?
Prohibition is a faulty and illogical notion, and history proves that it is a waste of time and resources. The USA has prohibited the illicit drug traffic, only to create a criminal element that has made the policing forces look like weak pretenders---the driving force behind this is the vast amounts of money changing hands and human nature. The USA being controlled by a conservative thought process has assured that learning from the mistakes of Alcohol prohibition go unheeded, and repeated. The mistakes of Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq, with several "small conflicts in between" has shown the world that the USA is a Giant Fool, who does not keep its word, and can justify even the worst crimes against humanity with flippant and irrational excuses, a smirk, a wink, and a jab............
Taking this thought a little further will show that the world has a much better chance that Nuclear weapons will never be used again, if every power has the ability to retaliate,with the same.
* If one were to take into consideration the failures of the intelligence community to prevent occurrences such as this disaster in Iraq----how can anyone be assured that say for example the Saudis do not have Nuclear weapons---they certainly could afford them especially after the collapse of the Soviet Scientific Community. Or any other group/power/government who has the money could afford these relatively cheap weapons.
Now with the USA proving to the world that they are incapable of maintaining a sane approach to world power, they most likely are on the way out of the running, and who could name even one of their allies who could assume a truly leadership role: the UK?, Russia? who?
The American people could make the move, first by prosecuting the international criminals in this administration, and then moving for peace by assuring that no power has the power to use Nuclear weapons without assurance that they would not receive the same. They can show the world that they have learned from the mistakes of the past-----keep the conservative element within its ranks from taking power by using the mistakes they have made as the example of a failed doctrine. Conservatism has failed, and will always fail, because it prevents the practitioner from learning from the mistakes of the past. It therefore is a foolish and self destructive approach, and should be revealed as such, and taught as such in every school from the earliest grade possible.
For the first time in history human kind is very close to self destruction, and the possibility that some savior from heaven will intervene is a childish fantasy that only a few truly believe. The USA has had a wonderful chance and they have failed miserably to lead the world effectively few if any more chances are likely to occur. Time is of the essence.