How I learned to start worrying and hate the bomb
November 2006
I am opposed to Iran developing nuclear weapons
– if, indeed, that is what Tehran intends. The potential for mass destruction
on the Indian subcontinent brought about by the ‘Hindu bomb’ and the ‘Islamic
bomb’, developed by two neighbours who have gone to war four times over Kashmir
since partition in 1947, fills me with dread. The underground test – which
either failed or was unusually small – carried out by North Korea makes me
concerned for the future of the Korean peninsula.
Although megalomania, national prestige and
other murky ambitions creep into these designs, they are not entirely
irrational projects. To suggest so would be to distort the situation and draw
attention away from the very real fears entertained by aspiring nuclear powers.
Iran, for example, not only has the world’s
most powerful nation breathing down its neck on its borders with Afghanistan
and Iraq, it also has nuclear-armed rivals in the vicinity: Israel and
Pakistan.
The current fixation on North Korea, Iran,
Pakistan and India ignores the herd of nuclear-armed elephants stampeding
through the room. Naturally, the nuclear ambitions of these and other minor
powers make the world a more dangerous place, but it was hardly any safer
before they drew up their plans.
World on a hair-trigger
Ultimate responsibility for the threat of
nuclear proliferation rests with the original five (the USA, USSR, UK, France
and China) nuclear powers – known as ‘nuclear weapons states’ in the Nuclear
non-Proliferation Treaty – plus one (Israel, which maintains an official policy
of ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal).
This is particularly the case with the United
States, which not only possesses the largest nuclear arsenal in the world
(estimated at some 10,000 warheads) but the Bush administration has also torn
up many of the treaties Washington signed on the subject. Since coming to
office, he has initialled just one agreement, the Moscow Treaty, in 2002, which
committed the two former Cold War enemies to limit their deployable stockpile
to 2,200 operational warheads each. But this is mere origami, since both powers
can keep the rest of their existing warheads in non-operational stockpiles.
In fact, the USA’s short-lived policy of more
passive ‘stockpile stewardship’ was derailed by George W Bush when he
announced, in 2003, that the US would start developing a new generation of
small ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons (bunker busters, as they have been dubbed)
which could actually be used during battle.
As long as the major powers and their friends
refuse to put their own house in order and commit to nuclear disarmament, the
world will continue to become increasingly hazardous as countries scramble to
acquire their own nuclear insurance policies – a ‘nuclear deterrent’ is what
the existing nuclear powers call it when it comes to themselves.
But that’s different, apologists would protest.
Stable democracies are not the same as failed states, international pariahs and
totalitarian dictatorships. Democracies are accountable. And great powers are
more careful because of the guarantee of mutually assured destruction their
large arsenals afford them.
Despite the laudable ideals of democracy and
its many achievements, there is no hard evidence that democracies necessarily
wage fewer wars, are less violent or better world citizens than other forms of
government. WWI was fought between democracies, albeit a more limited model
than today. Germany elected Hitler democratically, and he then went about
dismantling the countries democratic institutions.
History repeating… or worse
The USA developed the first nuclear weapon and
it was this democracy that dropped the only two nuclear bombs ever used in a
conflict on Hiroshima and Nagasaki six decades ago. It is that same superpower
that now says it reserves the right to develop and deploy tactical nuclear
weapons in the future. These ‘bunker busters’ may be small in comparison with
other nuclear monstrosities, but they are still far more powerful and
destructive than conventional weapons and will leave the immediate surroundings
contaminated for years.
In addition, what may be (relatively) stable
regimes today could collapse unceremoniously in the future, as Germany did in
the 1930s. In the early 1980s, who would have believed that, within a decade, the
Soviet Union would no longer be? Experts currently fear that warheads from its
ageing, poorly guarded arsenal could fall into the hands of terrorists. A
longer-term risk is what would happen if the Russian Federation disintegrates
further and one of the republics is taken over by an unstable despot – who
would keep his hand off the button?
It is not beyond the realm of the impossible
that the United States, Britain, France, or China may someday destabilise.
Stable systems can suddenly go into freefall on the back of some disaster or
unexpected shake-up. Israel, given the precariousness of its situation, is
particularly prone to this danger.
“The size of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, the
uncertainty of how it would be used and the risk of a mistake raises many
questions in the unstable Middle East,” writes Harold
Hough in Jane’s Intelligence Review, a leading defence journal.
“Although Israel is the dominant conventional military power in the region,
could the vulnerability of its nuclear force tempt the Israeli Government to
launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against another country?”
What’s to stop a regime possessed with even a
temporary but severe dose of collective irrationality – or mass hysteria – from
deploying a couple of nuclear bombs, particularly on a defenceless enemy who
can’t hit back? For instance, what if a terrorist atrocity worse than 11
September 2001 were visited on the United States, is there not the possibility
that the desire for vengeance would lead to deafening and irresistible calls to
“Nuke’em!”? This wouldn’t bring about the nuclear Armageddon feared during the
Cold War – and epitomised in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960s classic black comedy Dr
Strangelove – but could lead to ‘limited’ nuclear strikes, with all the
human pain and suffering they entail.
In the global balance of things, it is the real
and present arsenals held by the current members of the exclusive nuclear club
that provokes the most fear in the human population, not the vague dreams and
aspirations of the weak and marginalised.
For instance, survey after international survey
shows people around the world perceive the USA as the biggest threat to world
peace. Even Washington’s friends have been sweating in recent years. In the
wake of the test in North Korea, an international
poll of some the USA’s closest allies – UK, Canada, Israel and Mexico –
found that three-quarters of respondents believed Bush had made the world a
more dangerous place, whereas 69% believed the same about Kim Jong-Il.
As long as the current nuclear powers refuse to
take action, plenty of aspirants will make their bid to join the nuclear club
to even the playing field. It is hypocritical and counterproductive to tell the
rest of the globe to “do as I say and not as I do”. To make the world less
dangerous and disarm the ambitions of nuclear wannabes, the current nuclear
powers need to lead by example and commit in earnest to disarmament.
ã2006
K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the
copyright of Khaled Diab.