8/07/05: Talking the Talk on Nuclear Weapons - Chuck Baynton
Talking the Talk on Nuclear Weapons
By Chuck BayntonMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel Aug. 7, 2005
It’s the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month. If the threat of nuclear war were behind us, it might be enough to remember the occasion with expressions of regret for the massive loss of life 60 years ago.
But the threat isn’t behind us. It’s before us, growing in size and complexity. Most of us know too little about it, and as citizens of the world’s dominant nuclear power, we Americans bear a unique responsibility for addressing it. To do this occasion justice, both citizens and policy-makers need to accept that responsibility.
It’s a good start to review the relevant history.
Sometime around 1960, humanity passed a critical point of no return. Until then, countries could always hope to improve their fortunes in war by inventing a more powerful way to blow things up.
But thermonuclear weapons had grown to dwarf the Hiroshima bomb. The means of their delivery were as fast as a morning commute, and essentially invulnerable. Dozens of countries had the technical capacity to develop their own atomic bomb.
Almost overnight, the idea of military triumph through maximum force had changed from the stock-in-trade of generals and arms-makers to the ultimate folly. The arms race had reached a finish line of sorts, and many world leaders thought it was time to stop racing. One of them was President Kennedy, who called for gradual complete disarmament under international control.
Negotiations led to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which the U.S. has been a party since it entered into force in 1970. At the heart of the treaty is a bargain between non-nuclear weapons states and nuclear-armed states. The former agreed not to go nuclear, and the latter agreed (with no timetable) to undertake their own nuclear disarmament.
At a periodic review of the pact in 2000, nuclear weapon states renewed their disarmament pledge with "an unequivocal undertaking. . . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals to which all states are committed under Article VI ."
This past May, at the subsequent review of the treaty, the Bush administration vigorously argued that the U.S. is in full compliance with its Article VI obligation.
So where’s the problem? First, when we accepted our own nuclear disarmament as a solemn obligation, we did absolutely the right thing for Americans and all people. But second, despite our government’s protestations, our country has no intention to honor that obligation and, essentially, all the world knows it.
To defend the second point first, have you or any of the others seated around your breakfast table today heard of a U.S. government plan for complete American nuclear disarmament?
If there were such a plan, you’d know it. It’s in the nature of our democracy that when our leaders believe strongly in doing something that needs serious explaining, they get busy on the explaining, even if the issue involves planning for something that’s decades off. Hear anything about Social Security reform lately?
Foreign governments know all this, and they can also read the Nuclear Posture Review of December 2001, which talks about building a new generation of submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, with a matching set of new submarines, for when the current ones wear out.
The same document quotes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in its forward: "To meet the nation’s defense goals in the 21st century. . . nuclear weapons will, of course, continue to play a vital role." Reductions in warhead numbers, real enough, are touted to foreign governments as evidence of progress on disarmament, but they’re pitched as an efficiency program in the review.
What our government is so full of itself about is its willingness to cut back, by the end of 2012, to a deployed nuclear arsenal of 2,200 warheads, giving us the ability to unleash 10,000 Hiroshimas of explosive power in an afternoon, while a similar reserve arsenal sits on the shelf. Other countries are unimpressed that this shows a commitment to disarmament, and if more Americans knew these facts, we as a nation would understand their view far better.
Returning to the first point, American negotiators didn’t accept the obligation of nuclear disarmament out of a preference for weakness over strength. Their preference was for survival over nuclear war.
As they looked ahead from the 1960s, they saw that nuclear weapons had only three possible futures: proliferation, status quo (with five countries then known to have the bomb) or disarmament.
Countries with nuclear weapons may have thought their own were acceptable, but they understood perfectly that proliferation was not. Countries without nuclear weapons may have thought proliferation to them was acceptable, but they understood perfectly that the status quo, a nuclear weapons caste system putting them in the lower caste, was not. Universal abolition was the only viable basis for getting any kind of control over who had nuclear weapons.
Much of the trouble arises because the treaty requires the non-nuclear states to deliver on their end of the bargain every day, while it postpones the nuclear states’ key obligation to an indefinite future. This creates a permanent opening for lawyerly argument that we are in compliance, because the day when we must be disarmed isn’t here yet. That, in essence, was President Bush’s position at this year’s treaty review.
If we’re smart, we’ll drop that argument. The non-nuclear states have long suspected they’re being taken for suckers by America and the other recognized nuclear weapon states, and their patience is finite. As long ago as 1995, their diplomats were saying things like this: "Should (the Article VI disarmament obligations) not be fulfilled, we would need to review our continuation as party to the treaty."
What rogue state was that? Mexico.
Treaties are like diets: potentially beneficial but only if you do what you said you would. We can point fingers at others for breaches of their treaty obligations and ignore our own. Almost surely, they’ll continue to respond in kind. Or we can behave like a mature country and take responsibility first for our own conduct.
Without genuine American commitment to universal compliance with all obligations, the treaty will not endure. All too likely, its collapse would start a rush to nuclear proliferation in regions of conflict everywhere.
The risk that nuclear war would follow remains unacceptable.
Chuck Baynton of Whitefish Bay is a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility.