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The Deadly Current Toward Nuclear Arms
Think of Niagara Falls. Think of the onrushing current as the river pours itself toward the massive cascade. Imagine a lone swimmer a hundred yards or so upstream, desperately stroking against the current to keep from being swept over the precipice. That swimmer is President Obama, the river is the world, and the falls is the threat of unchecked nuclear weapons.
Henry James used the image of Niagara to describe the rush into World War I: ". . .the tide that bore us along.'' Hannah Arendt defined the wars of the 20th century as events "cascading like a Niagara Falls of history.'' Jonathan Schell used Niagara as an organizing metaphor for his indispensable critique of war, "The Unconquerable World.''
But now the image has entered the lexicon of strategic experts who warn of a coming "cascade of proliferation,'' one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current. The main burden is on Russia and the United States, which together possess the vast majority of the world's nuclear weapons, but President Obama deliberately made himself central to the challenge when he said in Prague, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.''
Now the Niagara current is taking him the other way. Here are the landmarks that define the swimmer's momentum.
■The US-Russia Treaty. Negotiators in Geneva are late in reaching agreement on a nuclear arms treaty to replace START, which expired last December. Obama is threading a needle, having to meet Russian requirements (for example, on missile defense) while anticipating Republican objections in the US Senate (for example, on missile defense). Warning: Bill Clinton was humiliated when the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999. Republicans' recalcitrance on health care is peanuts compared to the damage their rejection of a new START treaty would do.
■The Nuclear Posture Review, the Congress-mandated report on how the administration defines nuclear needs today. This, too, is overdue, probably because the White House has been pushing back against the Pentagon on numerous issues. Are nukes for deterrence only? Will the United States renounce first use? Having stopped the Bush-era program to build a new nuclear weapon, will Obama allow further research and development? What nations will be named as potential nuclear threats? Warning: The 1994 Nuclear Posture Review was Clinton's Pentagon Waterloo. It affirmed the Cold War status quo, killing serious arms reduction until now.
■Although usually considered apart, the broader US defense posture has turned into a key motivator for other nations to go nuclear. The current Pentagon budget ($5 trillion for 2010-2017) is so far beyond any other country, and the conventional military capacity it buys is so dominant, as to reinforce the nuclear option abroad as the sole protection against potential US attack. This is new.
■In April, a world leaders nuclear summit will be held in Washington, but both nuclear haves and have-nots will be taking positions based on the US-Russia Treaty (and its prospects for ratification) and the Nuclear Posture Review. Warning: if China sees US missile defense as potentially aimed its way, a new nuclear arms race is on.
■In May, the signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty will hold their eighth regular review session in New York. Since the nations that agreed to forego nuclear weapons did so on the condition that the nuclear nations work steadily toward abolition, the key question will be whether Obama has in fact begun to deliver on his declared intention. If not, get ready for the cascade.
In truth, the current rushing toward Niagara cannot be resisted. Not seven nuclear nations, therefore, but 17, or, ultimately, 70. But beware an analysis like this. The falls are an analogy, not a fact. Obama warned of such fatalism, calling it in Prague, "a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.'' Therefore, reject the analogy. Obama is not a lone swimmer, but a voice of all humanity. The nuclear future is not pre-determined. Human choices are being made right now to define it anew.
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8 Comments so far
Show AllHuman choices which are also sane and humane reject increased nuclearization.
But corporate choices, which actually run governments, especially that of the U.S., are neither sane nor humane. All they care about are more profits and more power.
"With the splitting of the atom, everything has changed except the way we think. So we drift toward catastrophe."
- Albert Einstein
The military-industrial complex is the most dangerous element of psychopathic corporatism.
The more people the more conflict. Nukes are conservative's method of conflict resolution.
-"Having stopped the Bush-era program to build a new nuclear weapon, will Obama allow further research and development?"
Is this accurate? Didn't Obama already get the money to continue the new nulear weapons designs and refurbishment plants in the last budget?
I think what this article makes clear is that all countries, not just the US, will aquire or increase nuclear weapons as they feel they need to. Why the US feels it needs more, I can't understand, but clearly other countries, faced with the massive US army and nuclear force, not to mention regional rivals to defend against, that is reason enough to get nuclear bombs. How many they get, well that depends on circumstance. Nobody certainly is going to forgo atomic bombs because of Obama's lofty oratory.
jlocke123 wrote:
-"Having stopped the Bush-era program to build a new nuclear weapon, will Obama allow further research and development?"
Is this accurate? Didn't Obama already get the money to continue the new nulear weapons designs and refurbishment plants in the last budget?
Good catch jlocke. It is indeed not accurate. Obama's stance on nuclear weapons is reminiscent of St. Augustine when he said "Lord grant me chastity, but not just yet".
Here at Los Alamos, spending for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Replacement Research facility [the euphemism for the bomb factory is up over 400% from FY 2010 [$225M for FY 2011 compared to the proposed $55M in FY 2010. In KC a new facility is likewise funded, this time with a private financing scheme to keep it off books. [Hard to explain how one can afford new atomic weapons but can't afford to keep the Kansas City schools open]
So yes, this talk of "not in my lifetime" is indeed a smokescreen to maintain nuclear dominance. Despite rhetoric proclaiming 'we are not seeking new nuclear weapons" this is what is in fact occurring:
Pentagon Eyes More Than $800 Million for New Nuclear Cruise Missile Tuesday, March 9, 2010
http://gsn.nti.org/siteservices/print_friendly.php?ID=nw_20100309_8124
Obama isn't going to help us. Note his rah rah for nuclear power in the SOTU speech. THe only thing powerful enough to dislodge the military/industrial complex in the USA would be an economic collapse so large that it would likely be manipulated into military dictatorship anyway. Look at Ukraine and Venezuela. Revolutions rarely work.
Plus a good third or more of the USA is completely misguided and ready to die for bogeymen they don't even know. Women all over the planet still think it's their right to put more babies on a pile already far too high.
Well, hope you're ready to see them vaporized or starve. Hasta la Vista, human race.
Ho, hum, yet another puff piece praising Obama with all the logical consistency of a used tissue. Author Carrol, quoting Obama's lofty goal of "a world without nuclear weapons," concludes, "Obama is not a lone swimmer [against proliferation], but a voice of all humanity."
Two simple facts, one mischaracterized and the other "forgotten" by Carrol, suffice to confirm Carrol as a crackpot of the "liberal" kind and Obama as anything but a humanitarian. First, note Carrol's hypothetical: "Warning: if China sees US missile defense as potentially aimed its way, a new nuclear arms race is on." In fact, as has been widely reported over the last several years, the US deployment of a ship-borne antimissile shield off the Chinese coast as well as US sales of antimissile systems to Taiwan have repeatedly been denounced by the Chinese as threats to their deterrent. The Chinese have repeatedly vowed to counter with improved systems of their own. That is to say, the "race" warned against is already on.
Got that? Antimissile systems promote nuclear weapons proliferation. Then time for the fact "forgotten" by Carrol: His hero-of-humanity Obama is maintaining G.W. Bush's unilateral abrogation of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty with Russia, the biggest such treaty ever accomplished, and one which Obama could have unilaterally reinstated--no fussing with the Senate required.
So much for the "voice of all humanity" touted by Carrol.
The only use of Carrol's article is as an object lesson in bourgeois pacifism (a species of bourgeois reformism), which claims that the evil of war--in this case, preparations for nuclear war--can be removed while maintaining the very system, the the nation-state system cum capitalist imperialism, that demands precisely such preparations and the wars to which they lead.
If 0bama's a "voice of humanity," I'll register Plutonian.
If "humanity" in any sense means being kind to or beneficial towards humans, Plutonians likely have 0 beat.
The Dems have votes to approve health care, a treaty, green power, and a bail out for Main Street.
Instead, Dems approve insurance graft, wars, coal and nuclear nightmares, finance graft, torture, and continued erosion of civil rights.
For all his characteristic grace of phrase, James' image of a tide fails to acknowledge the deliberateness with which these decisions are made. One can view Niagra quite safely without jumping into a barrel with snorkel and helmet. The tide is that desire for profit:
"I can get this close; I can get This close; I can get THIS close; I can ge-eh-eh-oh-ah-ooh-eeee!"
As long as the game is set up so that all steps until the last are profitable, even increasingly profitable, someone will surely take the last step.