Why strive for
nuclear weapons'
superiority in times of peace?
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
May 23, 2007
LONDON - Remember the old mantra? - “Nuclear
weapons keep the peace”. At least during the Cold War it was an
arguable proposition, although the probability was that the U.S.S.R. had
had enough of war and had no designs on the territorial occupation of
Western Europe. The U.S., for its part, was not, and never had been, interested
in dominating Russia. In truth, there was nothing of central importance
to fight about. Still the arcane science of deterrence theory kept legions
of eggheads employed and busy writing papers and attending conferences.
But the nuclear boffins today don’t even attempt to argue that nuclear
weapons keep the peace. Despite growing tension with Russia no one, not
even neo-conservatives, argues that Russia is an enemy that needs military
might to keep it at bay. As for China, President George W. Bush has made
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson the lead official in America’s
dealings with Beijing, which says it all. Peace between the old antagonists
apparently rules OK without nuclear deterrence.
So where else might nuclear weapons be “keeping the peace”?
Both Bush and his father dropped heavy hints that they could be used against
Iraq if Saddam Hussein used his supposed arsenal of chemical and biological
weapons and word has been allowed to get out that Iran could be targeted
with nuclear headed “earth diggers” to prize out Iran’s
underground nuclear research facilities. But the White House doesn’t
have the military at its beck and call on that contingency. There are
well-substantiated rumours that high-level military officers have threatened
to resign if the Iran option were considered. And the former chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, recounted in his biography
how he backed down Defence Secretary Dick Cheney when he pressed Powell
to investigate how nuclear weapons might be used during the first Gulf
war.
In truth nuclear weapons are unusable anachronisms. Breaking the taboo
on the use of torture is one thing; breaking it on devastating millions
of innocents is quite another. So why is Britain renewing its nuclear
deterrent and why is the Bush administration trying to achieve nuclear
primacy?
This may seem the wrong question to pose when the U.S. has 66% fewer strategic
bombers, 50% fewer intercontinental nuclear missiles and 50% fewer ballistic
missile submarines than it possessed during the Cold War. But numbers
are not the main point- quality, destructive power and accuracy are. During
the last years of the Cold War a U.S. submarine-launched missile had a
12% chance of destroying a hardened Russian rocket silo; today the chance
is over 90%. The strategic balance between Russia and the U.S. is becoming
less stable- as Russian nuclear forces decline in serviceability even
faster the technical possibility of a successful first strike by the U.S.
is increasing.
Yet back in 1974 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was questioning the
idea of nuclear superiority: “What in the name of God is strategic
superiority? What is the significance of it, politically, militarily,
operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it?”
Well, if you are a George Bush type you strut, you push out your chest
and you feel good. Is that the answer? It is maybe part of it. But it
is also bureaucratic inertia. In 1993 President Bill Clinton’s Secretary
of Defence, Les Aspin, made it clear he intended to sharply cut the U.S.
arsenal. But mid level officials failed to provide Aspin with a road map
on how to do this. Supported by influential members of Congress they simply
stalled. The industrial-congressional-academic-journalistic complex that
dominates the nuclear weapons debate makes it almost impossible for even
a president- as Ronald Reagan discovered in his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev
in Reykjavik- to put the U.S. nuclear machine into real reverse.
Common sense suggests that a U.S. president would either have to have
nerves of steel or brains of lead to consider a pre-emptive nuclear attack
on Russia. Nevertheless, the fact that it is U.S. policy to not only remain
top nuclear dog but to achieve the power to make such a pre-emptive strike
is very frightening. Who can read the future? - After another decade of
deteriorating relations with an increasingly assertive Russia, a panicky
president with an electorate wild with anger after a suitcase nuclear
weapon goes off in Grand Central Station, with scientists reporting to
him that it looks as if the enriched uranium originated in a Russian facility,
might try and push the button- (assuming his senior officers allowed him
to).
But if you think this is ludicrous scare mongering then why, when the
peace is kept, do we hold on to our nuclear weapons
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
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