Policies
Rooted in Arrogance
Are Certain to Fail
By
David
Krieger
President, The
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
TFF associate
August 2, 2002
These are difficult times for peace. Since the Bush
administration assumed power in the United States, there
has been a steady beating on the drums of war accompanied
by a systematic undermining of the foundations of
international law. The September 11th terrorist attacks
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon bolstered
the Bush administration's plans to secure US global
military dominance through increased military budgets,
deployment of missile defenses, development of more
usable nuclear weapons and the weaponization of space.
Congress has largely acquiesced in supporting these
plans.
The United States has always held to a double standard
with regard to nuclear weapons. This double standard was
given legal form in the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), in which five countries were designated as
nuclear weapons states (United States, Soviet Union,
United Kingdom, France and China), and the rest were
designated as non-nuclear weapons states. The latter
agreed in the treaty not to develop or acquire nuclear
weapons in exchange for a promise by the nuclear weapons
states to pursue good faith negotiations to achieve
nuclear disarmament.
Throughout the life of the NPT, the non-nuclear
weapons states have called for more tangible signs of
progress toward achieving the nuclear disarmament promise
of the nuclear weapons states. They were successful in
2000 in getting the nuclear weapons states to commit
unequivocally to undertake the elimination of their
nuclear arsenals. However, the nuclear weapons states,
and particularly the United States, have broken this
promise as well as a string of other promises with regard
to their NPT obligations.
Now the United States has gone even further. It has
developed policies for the preemptive use of nuclear
weapons. In its secret 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which
was leaked to the media in March 2002, the United States
outlined its intention to develop contingency plans for
the use of nuclear weapons against seven countries (Iraq,
Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia and China). Five
of these are non-nuclear weapons states, which at a
minimum contradicts the spirit of the NPT as well as
previous US security assurances to non-nuclear weapons
states.
President Bush, flush with popularity from his war
against Afghanistan, continues to threaten war against
Iraq. The principal reason he gives for attacking Iraq is
to replace its leader, Saddam Hussein, and to
preemptively strike Iraq for its refusal to allow UN
inspectors to assess whether or not it is developing
weapons of mass destruction.
Prior to the Bush administration, the US had a policy
of nuclear deterrence, far from a policy that provided
the United States with security from nuclear attack. The
Bush administration has criticized deterrence policy but
yet maintained it, while at the same time promoting
policies of preemption.
Preemption is the new catch-word of Bush's nuclear
policy. It is a means of assuring that a nuclear double
standard continues to exist. It is a policy of nuclear
apartheid in which select states are bestowed (or bestow
upon themselves) nuclear privilege while others are
attacked for seeking to enter the elite club of nuclear
powers.
Ironically, Bush's nuclear policy makes it more likely
that terrorists will obtain nuclear weapons or materials.
The fraudulent arms control agreement that was signed in
May 2002 by Bush and Putin, the Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty (SORT), allows thousands of nuclear
warheads to be put in storage rather than destroying
them. These stored nuclear warheads will be tempting
targets for terrorists as will be the thousands of tons
of nuclear materials available throughout the world that
could be fashioned into nuclear or radiological weapons.
The Bush administration is spending only approximately
one-third of the three billion dollars per year called
for by the US blue ribbon commission to prevent Russian
nuclear materials from falling into the hands of
terrorists.
Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty and his advances toward deployment of
missile defenses are compelling China to substantially
strengthen its nuclear forces aimed at the United States,
as China forewarned it would do in these circumstances.
Under Bush's leadership, US allies in Europe and Asia
will be brought in as "partners" in a global missile
defense system that will be hugely expensive, unlikely to
be effective and provide no protection against terrorists
who would initiate their attacks, nuclear and otherwise,
without launching missiles.
Mr. Bush is squandering US leadership potential for
global cooperation under international law, and instead
pursuing policies that are based on military dominance,
uncertain technology and nuclear apartheid. They are
policies rooted in arrogance and certain to fail. They
are, in fact, already failing by their allocation of
resources to increasing the militarization of the planet
rather than to meeting existing basic human needs that
would help eradicate the fertile breeding grounds for
continued terrorism and hatred of the United States.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).
He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
©
TFF & the author 2002
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