Nuclear Disaster or Nuclear Disarmament?
Decision Time For An Endangered World

By Sean Howard
Cape Breton Post, Saturday March 19, 2005

Events in coming months are likely to prove crucial in the long struggle to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons. In May, 188 member states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will meet in New York to consider two radically different visions for countering the nuclear threat. And in August, the world will mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On August 6, 2004, the Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, called for a ‘Year of Remembrance and Action for a Nuclear-Free World’. The anniversary, he argued, had the potential to “sow the seeds of new hope and cultivate a strong future-oriented movement” to lift the nuclear cloud from the planet. Alas, there is every prospect that the “budding of hope” called for by the mayor – movingly offered as a “pledge for the peaceful repose of all atomic bomb victims” – will be blighted by diplomatic setbacks and political failure: a deepening, not a lifting, of that terrible shadow.

For thirty-five years, the NPT has provided the basic legal and political framework for efforts to both avert the nightmare of a nuclear free-for-all and to achieve the goal, espoused by the United Nations since its inception, of a nuclear-weapon-free world. During the Cold War, the treaty enjoyed mixed fortunes: remarkable success in preventing proliferation, general failure in advancing disarmament. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, hopes were naturally high that serious progress on both fronts would now be forthcoming.

At the 1995 NPT review conference, the nuclear-weapon states – the US, Russia, Britain, France and China – promised a “determined pursuit…of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons.” The final declaration of the 2000 review conference noted the “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” And in 2005? The United States, with the complicit support of the other members of the ‘nuclear club’, is determined to break, once and for all, the reciprocal bond, the basic bargain, holding the NPT together: non-proliferation in exchange for disarmament.

Without that centre, the treaty will not hold; and without the treaty, the current system of international peace and security will fall apart. This is not just the view of the global anti-nuclear movement; it is the deep fear of many states in the ‘real world’. In 1998, seven states – Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden – formed a ‘New Agenda Coalition’ to push for complete nuclear disarmament. Seven years later, the Foreign Ministers of these countries described themselves as “more convinced than ever that nuclear disarmament is imperative for international peace and security.” In an impassioned plea to public opinion, published in the International Herald Tribune last September, the ministers’ argued: “Non-proliferation is vital. But it is not sufficient. Nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are two sides of the same coin and both must be energetically pursued. Otherwise we might soon enter a new nuclear arms race with new types, uses and rationales for such weapons and eventually also more warheads. And the primary tool for controlling nuclear weapons, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, risks falling apart, with further proliferation as a consequence.”

On February 23, the same concern was voiced by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: “I am convinced that efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation must go hand-in-hand with nuclear disarmament. The NPT has served us extremely well over the past decades. However, the regime faces serious challenges to its credibility.”

From the US perspective, the most serious challenge to the NPT is the treaty’s ‘outdated’ view of non-proliferation as a means to an end – a nuclear-free world – rather than an end in itself. The real issue, Washington argues, is not getting rid of evil weapons, but of making sure they never fall into evil hands. Last month, Stephen Rademaker, US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms control, described the disarmament “debate” as a “regrettable distraction from the real compliance issues that confront the NPT.” And last September, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, recently nominated to serve as America’s next UN Ambassador, declared that Bush Administration was “reinventing the non-proliferation regime it inherited” by “creating precedents and changing perceived realities and stilted thinking.”

By far the most important component of this strategy is the reinvention of the NPT: the elevation of one half of the treaty on stilts so high it lets the nuclear powers look out for ‘rogues’ across the globe, while overlooking their own arsenals and obligations. And by far the most important ‘precedent’ established so far is the invasion of Iraq, an illegal act of aggression launched in the name of non-proliferation. If the NPT implodes, such wars against ‘terror’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – fought by states determined to keep, and retain the ‘right’ to use, such weapons – will rush to fill the vacuum.

The fact that Iraq was shown not to have been in possession of chemical or biological weapons – and was utterly ill-equipped to restart its nuclear programme – matters not to Bolton or Rademaker, Rumsfeld or Rice, Bush or Cheney. The war, in their view, was the vital declaration of US independence in post-Cold War foreign policy: its inalienable right to cut off the hands of the ‘outlaws’ before they grasp, or share with other rogues, the Bomb, the great atomic prize that America, for one, has no intention of ever relinquishing.

If the New Agenda countries and their many supporters, including Canada, can withstand US pressure to ‘reinvent’ the NPT in May, then the nuclear shadow will at least have been stopped in its advance, and the commemoration of the agony inflicted on Hiroshima can act as a catalyst for change: the urgent steps we need to take to avoid an even greater hell.

Sean Howard, Ph.D, is adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University and a member of the University’s Centre for International Studies.

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