We Yanks don't think about nukes very much any more. That's so '80s, so Reagan-era, so Evil Empire. The Iron Curtain has fallen, the Soviet Union has disbanded, and the nuclear menace has dissolved. Or has it?
There remain at least 36,000 nuclear weapons in the world today -- 15,000 in the United States, 2,400 of those on ``high alert.''
On President Clinton's visit to India and Pakistan, those feuding brothers with recently developed nuclear capabilities, he clucked his tongue at the prospect of trigger-happy nations with the bomb and random nuclear terrorism. But his message was diluted by America's obvious hypocrisy on nuclear weapons.
Clinton arrived in South Asia just hours after 36 members of the Sikh minority were massacred in the Kashmir Valley, likely by Pakistani militant groups. The Kashmiri border between India and Pakistan is one of the tensest on Earth: cold, sparsely populated, hotly contested, heavily militarized. If, God forbid, there is nuclear warfare in South Asia, some incident in Kashmir might provide the spark.
The massacre gave even more impetus to the president' plea that India and Pakistan lay down their arms and sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The treaty bans nuclear-capable nations from carrying out nuclear test explosions, or helping other nations to do so. The only problem with his plea: America has no leverage. The Senate refused last year to ratify the treaty.
Why the rejection? Partisan politics, pure and simple. During the test-ban debate, eight months after the president's impeachment trial, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., made a wisecrack about ``(giving) Monica my regards.'' Clinton's adversaries in the Senate saw a chance to stick it to the man they could not oust from office, and ended up eroding U.S. credibility as a world leader instead.
How can the United States -- the only remaining superpower -- go around asking nations to ``just say no'' to nuclear testing when we refuse to do so ourselves? It makes us a laughingstock and hampers U.S. ability to maintain balance even among our allies and neutral countries. These include an economically unstable Russia, which has yet to ratify the START II arms-reduction treaty, and which has nuclear weapons deployable in mere minutes.
America has become increasingly isolationist, not only unwilling to take leadership on nuclear testing, but also on a series of other important global issues. Our nation refused to join the 1997 ban on land mines (signed by more than 100 nations), the environmental pact that same year on controlling greenhouse gases or the 1998 call to establish an International Criminal Court. (Oh, and there's that little matter of all the money we still owe the United Nations.)
Despite America's sole-superpower status, this behavior leaves a power vacuum.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently suggested that his nation, India and China form a strategic partnership to offset the influence of the United States. If that doesn't give Helms the cold sweats at night, I don't know what will.
In the absence of real moral leadership from the United States on the issue of nuclear testing, the newer nuclear states will continue to test their arsenals, and mature nuclear nations will feel less compelled to disarm. Perhaps America will find the strength to re-engage in the global arena. Until then, maybe we should pull out some of those old films teaching us how to duck and cover.
Chideya is a New York journalist who works in television, print and online publications. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press
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