A Catch-22 Nuclear World
Commentary: The more we invest in, and maintain, a vast nuclear arsenal, the more we slot those weapons into our strategic and tactical planning, the more such weapons will proliferate elsewhere.
June 10, 2007
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For countries -- small, middling, or great -- acquiring nuclear weapons is all about the most basic requirement: the survival of the regime or nation. Joining the "nuclear club" has proved an effective strategy for survival. The possession of city-busting, potentially planet-ending weaponry threatens to bring about a MAD -- the Cold War acronym for "Mutually Assured Destruction" -- world. While the "madness" of this strategy is apparent, a rarely mentioned aspect of today's geopolitics is that acquiring nuclear arms has proven a logical step for a regime to take when its survival is at stake.
The United States and the Soviet Union, the superpowers of the Cold War, stacked up nuclear weapons by the thousands as "deterrents," well aware that the use of even a tiny fraction of them would annihilate the planet many times over. The doctrine worked, maintaining a precarious peace until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
When Communist China acquired an atom bomb in 1964, it joined the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto power -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France -- which possessed nuclear arms, thus gaining an entry to the "nuclear club."
The club's monopoly was broken by a minor power, Israel, in 1967 -- stealthily, because its leaders decided not to test the bomb they had built. Even so, the Central Intelligence Agency got wind of it. What did then-President Lyndon Johnson's administration do about it? Nothing. And what about the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog agency charged with administering the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? It was empowered to act, but only in cases where a UN member had signed on to the Treaty. Israel did not.
In June 1981, when the UN Security Council's resolution 487 directed Israel to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards anyway, Israel simply ignored it. President Ronald Reagan's White House maintained a thunderous silence on the matter.
Compare that with the Bush administration's present stance in the case of Iran. Unlike Israel, Tehran initialed the Non-Proliferation Treaty early on -- and that treaty allows a signatory non-nuclear power to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. By not informing the IAEA when it started to do so in 2002, however, Tehran failed to meet its treaty obligations. That "original sin," combined with the Bush administration's strong animus toward a hostile regional power, has in its trail brought UN sanctions against Tehran, with Washington acting as the prime mover.
The Lure of Deterrance
In 1998, four years before Iran's push for nuclear power, India officially detonated an atomic bomb and, soon after, its arch rival Pakistan followed suit. Like Israel, neither of them had signed on to the NPT. India exploded a "nuclear device" in 1974, claiming it was for "peaceful purposes." U.S. sanctions followed but did not impede Delhi's progress in this field.
India had embarked on this path after acquiring a bloody nose in its 1962 border war with China over disputed territories in the Himalayan region. Following its defeat in a conventional war, its leaders concluded that only possession of atomic weapons would deter Beijing from invading again. By so doing, they underlined a growing belief in the deterrent power of nuclear arms -- a route by which militarily inferior countries could hope to deter their superior rivals or enemies.
