Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 30. maj 2005
/ Time Line May 30, 2005
Version 3.0
29. Maj 2005, 31. Maj 2005
05/30/2005
A Recipe for Disaster
By Lawrence S.
Wittner
On May 27, the 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review
conference, designed to shore up the international commitment to
creating a nuclear-free world, concluded in shambles. According to
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, the gathering accomplished “absolutely
nothing.” He added: “We are ending after a month of
rancor ... and the same issues continue to stare us in the
eyes.”
Originally signed in 1968 and entering into force in 1970, the NPT
provides that non-nuclear nations will forgo the development of
nuclear weapons and that nuclear nations will divest themselves of
their nuclear weapons through disarmament measures. Review
conferences, designed to secure compliance with the treaty’s
provisions, occur every five years.
For decades, the NPT worked reasonably well. By 1997, no additional
nations possessed nuclear weapons and, through arms control and
disarmament treaties or unilateral action, the nuclear powers
substantially reduced the number of nuclear weapons in their
stockpiles. As late as the NPT review conference of 2000, the
declared nuclear powers professed their “unequivocal”
commitment to nuclear abolition.
But, since that time, the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate rejected
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (negotiated and
signed by President Bill Clinton), India and Pakistan became
nuclear powers, and the Bush administration withdrew the United
States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, pressed forward with
the deployment of a national missile defense system (a latter day
version of “Star Wars”), dropped nuclear disarmament
negotiations, and proposed the development of new U.S. nuclear
weapons. Furthermore, two new nations may be acquiring a nuclear
weapons capability: North Korea (which claims it is) and Iran
(which claims it is not).
This unraveling of the NPT is a serious matter, and became the
focal point of an acrimonious debate among the delegates of 188
nations at the NPT review conference, which opened on May 2, at the United Nations.
The non-nuclear nations hit sharply at the failure of the nuclear
powers, and particularly the United States, to honor their
commitments to nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, a number of
countries, led by Egypt and Iran, demanded that the nuclear powers
pledge never to attack non-nuclear nations and that Washington
ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The U.S. government, in turn, sought to keep the spotlight on the
alleged transgressions of North Korea and Iran. In one of the
conference’s opening addresses, U.S. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Andrew Semmel also accused the International
Atomic Energy Agency of failing to report Iran’s
non-compliance with the treaty to the U.N. Security Council. At the
same time, U.S. officials argued that the United States was
complying with the treaty’s requirements.
Even many of Washington’s traditional allies found the U.S.
position unconvincing. Apparently referring to the Bush
administration, Paul Meyer, the Canadian representative at the
conference, remarked acidly: “If governments simply ignore or
discard commitments whenever they prove inconvenient, we will never
be able to build an edifice of international
cooperation.”
U.S. credibility was further undermined by the Bush
administration’s decision to send lower-echelon officials,
rather than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to represent it at
the conference. According to observers, this snub represented an
attempt to undercut the significance of the review conference and,
thereby, mute the criticism that would emerge there of the U.S.
government’s disdain for nuclear disarmament—or at
least for U.S. nuclear disarmament.
Criticism of the U.S. role at the conference was particularly sharp
among peace and disarmament groups. “The United States has
had four weeks to demonstrate international leadership on nuclear
proliferation,” remarked Susi Snyder, secretary
general of the Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom. “Clearly, the U.S. delegation never wanted to
strengthen the treaty. Instead, they have spent four weeks ...
refusing to recognize agreements they made 5 and 10 years
ago.” According to Alyn Ware of the Lawyers
Committee on Nuclear Policy, it was “impossible to
prevent” nuclear proliferation “while the nuclear
weapons states insist on maintaining large stockpiles of weapons
themselves.” It was “like a parent telling a child not
to smoke while smoking a pack of cigarettes.”
Given the obviously self-defeating nature of U.S. nuclear policy,
why does the Bush administration cling to it so stubbornly? Why has
it spurned the efforts not only of the world community, but of the
U.S. government’s closest allies to strengthen the NPT and
continue progress toward a nuclear-free world?
One possible explanation is that the Bush administration believes
that it has the military capability to deter current nuclear
nations and to destroy hostile nations that reach the brink of
becoming nuclear powers. For example, if Iran continues to produce
fissionable material, Washington will simply launch an all-out
military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Therefore, the
Bush administration sees no need to maintain the bargain between
non-nuclear and nuclear powers that was struck decades ago through
the NPT. As Bush administration officials frequently say,
conditions in the world have changed, and U.S. policy will change
with them.
A second possible explanation, which does not exclude the first, is
that the Bush administration is getting ready to use nuclear
weapons in future wars. Despite the massive advantage the U.S.
government enjoys over other nations in conventional military
forces, these U.S. forces are now overstretched in fighting an
insurgency in a small country like Iraq. Furthermore, dispatching
substantial numbers of U.S. combat troops overseas is quite
expensive, and their death in large numbers undermines political
support for a war—as it is now doing. In this context, the
development and use of nuclear weapons to maintain what the Bush
administration defines as U.S. “national interests”
seem quite logical to U.S. national security managers. Ominously,
the new nuclear weapons for which the Bush administration has
requested funding from Congress are considered “usable”
nuclear weapons: so-called “bunker busters” and
“mini-nukes.”
As a result, the collapse of the NPT review conference of 2005 and
the hard-line nuclear policies of the Bush administration that have
contributed to it have seriously undermined the willingness of
nations to dispense with nuclear weapons. Indeed, these factors
seem to place the nations of the world back in the nuclear arms
race and, perhaps, on the road to nuclear war. Of course, popular
protest and wise statesmanship have turned around situations like
this in the past, and they might well do so again. But, in the
meantime, we should recognize that evading disarmament commitments
and plunging forward with nuclear weapons development and use is a
surefire recipe for disaster, writes History News Network.
05/30/2005
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