To
stop a nuclear terrorist
the West must give up
its nuclear weapons
By JONATHAN
POWER
November 30, 2001
LONDON - There are no points awarded for having seen this
truck coming down the road. I first wrote about the
likelihood of a group with no address getting its hands
on a nuclear weapon in my column in the International
Herald Tribune in 1975.
Likewise, those liberals who worried out loud for
years about Afghanistan first being armed and then left
to rot by the West or pointed out the dangers of letting
the structures of the Soviet Union collapse without
sufficient economic aid to ease the transition in a
sensible and organised way, have gained precious little
kudos with public opinion at large.
We are compelled to stand aside whilst the hardliners
call the shots. If they go wrong and provoke a coup
d'etat in Saudi Arabia or cause Pakistan's nuclear
weapons to fall into the wrong hands or leave a residue
of Arab hatred far deeper than existed before September
11th that combines to push Yasser Arafat aside in
Palestine and supplants him with a militant leadership
which will stop at nothing to destroy Israel, we will
have had as much influence on the course of events as
Bertrand Russell did languishing in jail for
conscientiously objecting to the madness of the First
World War.
But stop. I want to say one thing that I hope the
conservatives might listen to because it is in their own
interests as much as it is everyone else's. It is one
minute to midnight but as long as it is true, as the CIA
believes that it is as of this moment, that no terrorist
group has yet manufactured a nuclear weapon there is
still something that can be done. It is not to build an
anti-missile defence, because as William Perry, the
former U.S. secretary of defence argues in the current
issue of Foreign Affairs, a terrorist group is not going
to use ballistic missiles to deliver its weapons. Neither
is it to go to war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein has
as much interest as does the West in keeping the ultimate
weapon out of the hands of uncontrollable, free-lance,
terrorist groups that could decide from one day to the
next that he is an apostate too.
It is to do more of what the Bush administration has
already started to do - and which the Clinton
administration miserably and unforgivably failed to do,
so insouciant was the ex draft dodger about the danger of
nuclear weapons- which is to unilaterally start to
nuclear disarm. And then with the money saved launch a
mammoth search operation to uncover and safeguard every
bit of fissile material in the world.
At the summit with the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, earlier this month President George Bush made the
right first step. He announced a mammoth cut in nuclear
weapons and asked the Russians to match it without a
laborious treaty process. This indeed is the only way it
can be done when time is so short. But the logic of his
nuclear unilateralism needs to be followed through. If,
indeed, as Mr Bush argues, Russia and the U.S. are no
longer enemies, why do they need to point nuclear weapons
at each other? The U.S. does not point them at
Canada.
Let us get to the point. They are dangerous because an
accidental or unauthorised launch is always possible and,
as General George Lee Butler, the former head of U.S.
Strategic Command in charge of America's nuclear forces,
has argued, they are not needed because in reality they
are not useable. And above all they destroy the most
powerful argument against proliferation: that they are
too dangerous for other nations to possess.
But what to do about those that already have got them?
Let us not be so pessimistic. As Mr Perry reminds us,
since the end of the Cold War four nations - Ukraine,
Kazakhstan, Belarus and South Africa - have given up
their sizable arsenals and two others, Argentina and
Brazil, have terminated their nuclear weapons programs.
North Korea for its part has agreed to a nuclear
freeze.
China in all likelihood would give up its nuclear
weapons if Britain and France did. India probably would
if China did and Pakistan would then be in no position to
hold out. Israel would probably be the hardest nut to
crack but if this move is combined with a massive effort
by the U.S. to settle the Palestinian issue, which we
know from Camp David is within the realms of the possible
once Arafat knows the Israeli prime minister is strong
enough to deliver on a deal (which Ehud Barak manifestly
wasn't), then Israel can be prevailed upon to nuclear
disarm too.
The money - and the energies - liberated must be spent
on funding the cash-starved Russian nuclear industry both
to disarm and to take better care of its fissile
material, for that is clearly where the black market
originates. Beyond that the missing material has to be
tracked down before the clock hits midnight. Every sane
nation has to be enlisted to mount the greatest police
operation the world has ever seen. The combination of
moral sanction set by a heroic, but nonetheless
self-interested, example and the combined thoroughness of
the world's police forces might yet save New York's Grand
Central Station from a nuclear bomb left in a
suitcase.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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