The
nonsense of the panic
of proliferation
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
February 20, 2006
LONDON - Lost somewhere in the
mists of history is the knowledge that it was the
pro-American Shah of Iran who initiated Iran's quest to
build a nuclear bomb. And it was the anti-American
revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini that initially
suspended work on the bomb, from 1972 to 1985.
Fanning the panic of proliferation
has been a mainstay of the Bush Administration, supported
in the wings by the British government and more recently
France's president, Jacques Chirac. It is a high stakes
game that can slide too easily into the call for regime
change, as it did with Iraq.
Yet current would-be proliferators
are arguably not as dead set on proliferating, nor even
as advanced in their capabilities, as their antagonists
suggest. But unyielding critical rhetoric combined with a
lack of incentives to back down seems to only have the
effect of making the likes of North Korea and Iran more
determined than they ever were.
Moreover, today's game overlooks
that the success of previous policy in persuading
countries to give up and unwind their nuclear armaments'
plans or stocks of bombs - South Africa, Brazil,
Argentina, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and, most recently,
Libya. This was because the right incentives were put
before them.
In fact the Libyan nuclear program
had gone on for many more years than has either the
Iranian or North Korean. Despite a great deal of
assistance from Pakistan's rogue nuclear weapons'
entrepreneur, A.Q. Kahn, Libya appeared seriously slowed,
if not stalled, by apparently insurmountable
difficulties.
Iran may well be trying to build
nuclear weapons but it doesn't give the impression of
being in a tearing hurry. Its heavy water moderated
research reactor will not be online until 2014. Those who
have suggested an earlier timetable ignore the slow
progress made on completing the Bushehr reactor, a
light-water nuclear power reactor initially ordered from
Germany in 1975.
As for North Korea, an evaluation
by Alexander Montgomery in the current issue of Harvard's
quarterly, International Security, argues that
North Korea is likely to possess much less plutonium than
is commonly claimed. Making a close analysis of the
capacity factor of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and
factoring in the number of shutdowns it has experienced
as a result of mechanical problems, together with the
fact that 700 broken fuel rods were placed in dry
storage, it is unlikely that North Korea has more than
enough plutonium for three bombs, not enough to sell or
use in a test and still maintain a sufficient deterrent.
Moreover, North Korea only embarked
an its effort to develop a uranium enrichment plant late
in 2000. Perhaps North Korea all along has only thought
of nuclear weapon development as a useful bargaining
chip.
Overstating the dangers of these
countries' developing the bomb under the Bush
administration compares starkly with the peculiar
insouciance of the Clinton administration. In his book
the deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbot, confesses
the administration's total surprise when India held its
first nuclear weapons' test, even though articles in
The Statesman, an Indian daily, had warned it was
coming a couple of months before.
Clinton's only major accomplishment
in the field was paced by the freelance diplomatic
activity of former president Jimmy Carter. Clinton agreed
to a deal forged by Carter and Kim il Sung that ended
North Korea's nuclear bomb development in return for the
building of two conventional nuclear power stations and a
lifting of the American trade embargo. Clinton never
seemed to realize this was his most stupendous foreign
policy success and allowed the Republican majority in
Congress to get away with sabotaging full implementation
of the deal. The Administration and the media left the
American public to sleep on the issue.
But the Clinton Administration did
lay the foundations for its successor to raise Cain about
the possibility of a rogue, nuclear armed, country
building sophisticated enough nuclear tipped missiles to
launch an attack on the American heartland. The
anti-missile shield is a preposterous and expensive
solution to a problem that need never exist.
Some opponents of the missile
shield have said that an attack that does come will be
from a terrorist group armed with a stolen or primitively
manufactured nuclear weapon smuggled in on a boat. But as
a new report, "Nuclear Terrorism After 9/11", from
the International Institute for Strategic Studies makes
clear, Russian nuclear weapons have remained safely
secured even during the early years of turbulence; there
is no evidence of a nuclear black market - demand has not
responded to the minor supply; it is highly improbable
that any terrorist group could become a do-it-yourself
nuclear power; and the so called 'dirty nuclear bombs'
would cause only a small number of casualties.
Joe Public is being led by the nose
on nuclear weapons' policy. It has become nothing more
than a political game.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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