John Burroughs

In the October 2 vice-presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill ventured into a crucial area rarely touched by regular media. She asked:

Governor, on another issue, interventionism, nuclear weapons. What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?

Sarah Palin responded:

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.

Our nuclear weaponry here in the U.S. is used as a deterrent. And that’s a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry.

But for those countries — North Korea, also, under Kim Jong Il — we have got to make sure that we’re putting the economic sanctions on these countries and that we have friends and allies supporting us in this to make sure that leaders like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are not allowed to acquire, to proliferate, or to use those nuclear weapons. It is that important.

When it was his turn, Joseph Biden did not answer the question, instead referring to John McCain’s vote against ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1999, and to Barack Obama’s work on “keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.”

But Palin really did not answer the question either. She claimed that U.S. reliance on nuclear forces is “safe” and “stable” deterrence. One major question that comes to mind is whether Palin believes the eight other countries in the world with nuclear weapons also practice safe and stable deterrence. Her answer is no with respect to North Korea, and Biden also talked about the danger posed by Pakistan’s arsenal. That leaves six other countries (China, Russia, India, France, United Kingdom, Israel). Palin also said that “dangerous regimes,” Iran being one, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. But if deterrence works for the United States, why not for current nuclear have-nots?

More fundamental, though, and at the heart of the question posed by Ifill and not addressed by either Palin or Biden, is this: Deterrence is based on the will and capability to use nuclear weapons when deemed necessary. If you embrace deterrence, you embrace the possibility of use. Similarly, you can’t support the death penalty as a deterrent to horrendous crimes without supporting actual executions. Biden knows this. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed in June 2007 entitled “CSI: Nukes,” he stated that the “U.S. has long deterred a nuclear attack by states, by clearly and credibly threatening devastating retaliation.” He went on to argue that the United States should accelerate work on capabilities to trace the origin of fissile materials used in a terrorist nuclear attack, in order to be able to deter the country where the materials originate. He did not rule out U.S. use of nuclear weapons against such a country.

My organization, the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, this year released a statement, summarized here, that does answer Ifill’s question. In brief, the answer is it is never lawful, moral, or wise to use nuclear weapons, and therefore the United States should abandon the policy of deterrence premised on possible use and work hard for the global elimination of nuclear forces. We emphasize that nuclear use is incompatible with the present-day U.S. conduct of military operations in accordance (in the U.S. understanding) with legal requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination. That is true in all the myriad circumstances (certainly not only in response to a nuclear attack) in which the United States holds out the option of use of nuclear weapons: preemptive or responsive use against biological and chemical as well as nuclear capabilities or attacks; in response to overwhelming conventional attacks; and even in response to “surprising” military developments.

(more…)

Andrew Lichterman

With the collapse of the Nehruvian paradigm, consisting of democracy, secularism, non-alignment and “socialism,” the top ten to fifteen percent of Indians, the upper-crust of society, have set their face against the rest, especially the poor. Culturally, economically, and politically, they are closer to Northern elites and their own kin in North America and Europe. Strongly influenced by social-Darwinist ideas, they see the poor as a drag on “their” India. They want a shortcut to high global stature. What better route than the military one? Greatness here is defined purely in terms of power untempered by civilized conduct or compassion. Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, New Nukes: India, Pakistan, and Global Nuclear Disarmament (New York: Interlink Books, 2000), p.136.

Last summer, the Bush Administration completed an agreement with India, initially negotiated in 2005, that would allow expanded trade in nuclear fuel and technology. It is now before Congress. If approved, the deal could allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal more easily by using scarce domestic uranium for weapons production while buying fuel for its power reactors on the international market. It will also undermine an already shaky Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty(NPT) regime by giving a country that developed nuclear weapons outside the Treaty the benefits of international nuclear trade. In general, the deal reinforces the legitimacy of nuclear weapons and weakens global rule of law, as the United States, the world’s leading military power and a country that ignores its own NPT obligations to negotiate for the elimination of its nuclear arsenal, also claims the right to choose which countries are sufficiently “responsible” to have both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

In addition, the U.S.-India nuclear deal is an effort by elites in both countries to bolster nuclear energy programs that long have been unable to fulfill the promises made by their advocates of cheap, reliable nuclear-generated electricity. The risks posed by nuclear accidents and long-term storage of highly radioactive spent fuel remain unsolved. Expanded energy production and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be accomplished more flexibly and in a way that serves a broader spectrum of India’s population via the development of a variety of decentralized renewable energy technologies. Trade and investment in such technologies also would benefit the United States, helping to accelerate the development and use of renewable energy here as well.

Neither the press nor most U.S. arms control analysts have paid much attention to the broader changes in the U.S.-India relationship that elites in both countries are seeking, each with an eye to maximizing their own wealth and power. The 2006 U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review declared that “India is emerging as a great power and a key strategic partner.” U.S. Military planners envision India as a possible forward base for operations from South Asia to the Middle East, and perhaps as a junior partner in those operations as well. Arms makers see huge potential profit from increased arms sales, with India being one of the world’s largest importers of high-tech weapons. U.S.-based multinationals are gearing up for expansion into India, hoping to use the enhanced “security” partnership as a wedge to further open India to foreign investment and sales, not only in nuclear technology and services but in everything from banking to food and agriculture to big box retail stores.

The ambitions of elites in the two countries to strengthen an array of military and economic ties is reflected in the set of initiatives announced by U.S. President Bush And India’s Prime Minister Singh in July 2005 together with the agreement in principle on nuclear trade and cooperation. A few weeks earlier, the two countries had agreed to a “New Framework for the U.S.–India Defense Relationship.” The “New Framework” called for increased military cooperation across a wide range of activities, from joint exercises and intelligence exchanges to increased weapons trade to collaboration in missile defense development. The July 2005 agreements also established a “CEO Forum” to “harness private sector energy and ideas to deepen the bilateral economic relationship,” an agreement for closer cooperation in space technology and commercial space activities and a “Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture.” The U.S. private sector members of the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative governing board are Archer Daniels Midland, a diversified giant that takes agricultural products from the world over and turns them into commodities ranging from processed foods to biofuels and industrial chemicals, Biotech giant Monsanto, and Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer.

A significant part of the CEO Forum’s agenda is to greatly expand the degree to which foreign banking and financial services companies can do business in India. This position was duly echoed by the U.S. government, with a Treasury Department fact sheet stating that

the development of the financial sector and trade in financial services will play a key role in promoting private-sector led growth and economic stability in India. Opening the financial sector to foreign participation would make additional long-term financing available for infrastructure development.

In light of the spiraling collapse of the U.S. financial sector, the notion that opening India to its particular brand of radically deregulated, short-term profit-driven “financial services” will promote “economic stability” is dubious at best.

The socioeconomic impact of these proposed new arrangements–how they will affect the mass of the populations in India, the United States, and world-wide–remain almost entirely outside the ambit of U.S. discussion of the nuclear deal, although they have not escaped the notice of commentators in South Asia. The effect of the U.S.-India deal–or deals–will be to bind India to a development path favorable to particular elements in the U.S. political and economic elite, and to their Indian counterparts. In this future, India’s development will center on production of goods and services that serve global supply chains controlled by multi-national corporations. In addition to consumer goods and export crops that are mass commodities available to many in a few wealthy countries, but are luxury items available only to a fraction of the world’s population as a whole, there will be further expansion of “service industries” such as back-office corporate operations ranging from call centers to billing and information technology support. Also part of this global circuit of trade and investment are armaments and the capital goods, and engineering and construction services necessary to build new infrastructure to sustain components of these global production chains in “underdeveloped” regions. Increased U.S.-India trade and cooperation in high tech weapons, space, and nuclear technology will reinforce this pattern, producing few jobs for those below the top 20% of either country in income and little development that benefits the majority of the population in either country, further increasing wealth disparities, and consolidating the power of narrow elites in both states.

Nuclear technology is a prototypic element of this global system–and in the future envisioned by the elites of many countries is poised to become more important as supplies of fossil fuels are depleted. Producing energy in large, expensive centralized facilities, nuclear power is most useful for serving the emerging production and service centers of the global corporate capitalist metropole. It has far less promise, however, for improving living conditions among the many hundreds of millions of rural poor in India and world wide who neither can afford to buy much that global corporations have to offer nor are likely to be served by centrally-generated electricity anytime soon.

Only the nuclear cooperation deal itself is before Congress this week. But its purpose and likely effects need to be reevaluated in light of the mounting evidence that the dominant neoliberal global development model–which the set of U.S. India deals reached in recent years largely are designed to promote and enforce–is a disaster, leading to a global economic typhoon that capsizes all but the sturdiest boats rather than raising them.

The Bush administration is trying to push approval of this complex and important matter through Congress in the few days left before its session ends on September 26 (although the Congressional session could be extended). Unfortunately, the Democratic Party congressional leadership seems inclined to rubber stamp the deal, despite the lack of time for study or debate in the closing days of a session dominated by a financial crisis of historic proportions. This is a bad deal for most people in the U.S. and India, and likely for the rest of the world as well. At the very least, it deserves extensive, well publicized discussion before going forward.

For more information on the U.S.-India nuclear deal and the broader energy and security context, see

Rushing into the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Energy and Security, by Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, and M.V. Ramana of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, India.

For more detail on the nuclear weapons proliferation impacts of the agreement, see the commentary and resources provided by the Arms Control Association.

And for more in-depth background:

Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana, “Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2006

Aspects of India’s Economy No.41, ‘Global Power’, Client State: India’s Place in the US Strategic Order
Achin Vanaik, “Post cold war Indian foreign policy,” Seminar web edition #581 January 2008

Ray Acheson

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva is notorious for evoking frustration, rage, and despair among the members of civil society and the diplomatic community. Mandated to negotiate multilateral disarmament treaties (the only standing body that can do so), it hasn’t even agreed on a program of work for over ten years. It operates on consensus, meaning all 65 member states have to be in agreement for anything to happen. Every year the disarmament community gears up for another round of deliberations, hoping this year is the year that the stalemate will end and the deadlock will be broken. However, some of the major military powers continuously block the creation of new global security arrangements, choosing further military development over arms control, disarmament, and security.

There has been a long-standing dispute in the CD among the five (recognized) nuclear weapon states over the issues on the CD’s table: a fissile materials ban, prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS), nuclear disarmament, and negative security assurances. The US wants to begin negotiations on a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), but until this year has refused to allow substantive discussions on outer space (it is now willing to allow discussions on PAROS in the CD, without reference to the possibility of an agreement). China maintains the opposite position. While it actively promotes an international legal agreement on PAROS, it has been cautious and even hostile towards an FMCT.

On 23 March 2007, the six presidents of the CD put forward a proposal of work and a draft decision. The draft decision is a package approach (it includes action on all four issues simultaneously), it is carefully worded, and it accommodates conflicting priorities among member states. However, China (and a few other states) began making noise immediately, stalling the Conference from taking a decision on the proposal by arguing they needed more time to consult with their capitals. The first session of 2007 ended without a decision, and when the CD reconvened on 15 May, several states, including China, maintained they still needed more time to decide if they can accept the proposal.

Without intending to ignore the other states responsible for the delay, it is important to note that China’s response to the draft proposal in particular is reflective of the major problems facing all attempts to negotiate or even discuss disarmament measures: hyper-militarism among the major powers, and the capacity for geostrategic concerns to impede progress in negotiating treaties that could actually help shift the (im)balance.

Of the five nuclear weapon states, China has the least amount of fissile material stocks; if its production were banned, it would never be able to catch up to the other states. China’s objection to this appears, at first glance, rather ironic, considering China is the only nuclear weapon state that regularly calls for nuclear disarmament in its official statements at the United Nations. This concern, however, is determined by the parameters of power in the international community, which are currently set by the US, its foreign policy, and its quest for a “prompt global strike” capacity. It wants its military to be able to “hit targets anywhere on earth in an hour or two,” giving it unprecedented (and unmatched) dominance over the world’s affairs. In this context, China and other major and emerging powers believe they are faced with a choice: acquiesce, or keep up. Meanwhile, the US carefully makes strategic alliances with some of these powers that create the impression of further insecurity for others. For example, the US and India signed an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation that, if approved by US Congress, will allow India to import foreign uranium for its civilian programme while using more of its indigenous uranium to make nuclear weapons. The agreement undermines every international non-proliferation agreement and resolution, and of course, makes China and Pakistan nervous.

(more…)

John Burroughs

The Declaration of Independence refers to a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” A central setting now for the registering of the opinions of humankind is the UN General Assembly. Every year, the General Assembly adopts scores of resolutions on disarmament and security, calling for UN member states to negotiate treaties or take other actions on a wide range of matters. And every year for many years now, the United States has distinguished itself by opposing many of the resolutions.

During the Bush administration, that trend has accelerated, and it was especially marked in votes on December 6 as described in a UN press release. As Michael Spies comments in a piece entitled “Growing U.S. Isolation at the United Nations on Disarmament and Security,” on December 6 the United States cast the lone “no” vote on 12 of 54 resolutions, and opposed 26 of the 54. Among the resolutions where the United States stood alone in opposition were ones on control of small arms, promoting development through disarmament, and prevention of weaponization of outer space. (See table at end of “Growing U.S. Isolation”; see also First Committee Monitor.)

On nuclear weapons resolutions, the United States was in very poor company indeed. Only the United States and North Korea voted “no” on the resolution calling for bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into effect, reflecting the Bush administration opposition to ratification of the treaty following the Senate’s failure to approve it in 1999. Another example is the “Renewed Determination Towards the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons” resolution, as to which the only no votes came from the United States, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Virtually all governments supported the resolution, including close U.S. allies like Britain and Japan. It calls for holdout nations like the United States to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty, negotiation of a ban on production of plutonium and enriched uranium for weapons, a diminishing role of nuclear weapons in security policies, reduced operational status of nuclear forces, and verified and irreversible reductions of nuclear arsenals leading to elimination.

The General Assembly gets little attention in this country. The media and elites view it as a “talk shop,” as opposed to the Security Council, largely U.S. controlled, which can back up its edicts with sanctions and even military action. But activists and the public should become more informed about the General Assembly. It’s mostly true that it’s a “talk shop,” but it’s an important one: it’s where the opinions of the world’s nations are expressed, they’re usually opinions that should be acted upon, and they’re often consistent with the positions of Americans as shown by polling data.

John Burroughs

Along with other NGO representatives, I had the opportunity the other evening to say a few words at a reception here in New York honoring Kofi Annan, who will step down as UN Secretary-General at the end of this month. Speaking on behalf of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, I had no difficulty being utterly sincere. I started by thanking him for his condemnation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq as contrary to the UN Charter. I went on to say how much we appreciate his eloquent, informed and incisive calls for progress towards elimination of nuclear weapons, most recently in a remarkable speech at Princeton.

The speech is a clear exposition of the need for simultaneous action on two linked fronts: to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies for their production, and to marginalize and eliminate existing arsenals. Referring to the debate between proponents of “non-proliferation first” (mostly nuclear weapon states and their supporters) and proponents of “disarmament first,” Annan said:

“each side waits for the other to move. The result is that ‘mutually assured destruction’ has been replaced by mutually assured paralysis. This sends a terrible signal of disunity and waning respect for the [Non-Proliferation] Treaty’s authority. It creates a vacuum that can be exploited.”

Later, Annan observes that it is not clear how the NPT-acknowledged nuclear weapon states (Britain, China, France, US, Russia)

“propose to deal with the four nuclear-weapon-capable States [India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan] outside the NPT. They warn against a nuclear domino effect, if this or that country is allowed to acquire a nuclear capability, but they do not seem to know how to prevent it, or how to respond to it once it has happened. Surely they should at least consider attempting a ‘reverse domino effect’, in which systematic and sustained reductions in nuclear arsenals would devalue the currency of nuclear weapons, and encourage others to follow suit.”

Annan’s central proposal is this:

“I call on all the States with nuclear weapons to develop concrete plans — with specific timetables — for implementing their disarmament commitments. And I urge them to make a joint declaration of intent to achieve the progressive elimination of all nuclear weapons, under strict and effective international control.”

Most of what Annan says has been said repeatedly before, in international forums at least. But he says it very, very well, and as the Secretary-General he can put the truisms of those forums before the global public. There are a few points in his remarks that stretch the boundaries of current discussions around the UN, or the NPT, and even the report of the WMD Commission. The one I want to highlight is this:

“States that wish to discourage others from undertaking nuclear or missile tests could argue their case much more convincingly if they themselves moved quickly to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force, halt their own missile testing, and negotiate a robust multilateral instrument regulating missiles. Such steps would do more than anything else to advance the cause of non-proliferation.” [Emphasis supplied.]

It is absolutely correct that stopping proliferation and beyond that progress on elimination of nuclear arsenals will require paying very serious attention to delivery systems. That is something we, especially Andrew Lichterman, have been saying on this blog and elsewhere, but since the high water mark of disarmament discussions in the mid-1990s, it has basically receded from view. So Annan is to be congratulated for helping to bring it back into view.

One last thing: Don’t miss Zia Mian’s superb piece in the Daily Princetonian taking Annan’s speech as a starting off point for a meditation on the challenges of planning for and achieving the end of the nuclear age.

John Burroughs

Today an item in the New York Times World Briefing said, in its entirety:

France successfully fired its new submarine-launched long-range M51 missile over the Atlantic in its first experimental test flight, the Defense Ministry said. The missile is designed to carry six thermonuclear warheads and has a range of up to 6,000 miles.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Security Council resolution condemning the test as jeopardizing international peace and security. That was the Council’s response to the July missile test by North Korea. But as Michael Spies blogged here regarding a subsequent U.S. missile test, the United States, France, and other permanent members of the Council apply different standards (if any) to themselves.

Michael Spies

Eight days before the lapse of Iran’s Security Council imposed deadline to suspend all uranium enrichment activities, Argentina reportedly announced its plans to expand its nuclear power program including a return to uranium enrichment. A the first step in a multistage initiative named the “Argentina Nuclear Plan” intended to reinvigorate its nuclear energy sector, Argentina will spend $3.5 billion to finish construction of the Atucha II reactor, and in 2010 to begin construction of a fourth power reactor. Like an increasing number of states, Argentina is looking toward the exploitation of nuclear energy as a mean toward reining in greenhouse gas emissions.

Like Brazil, Argentina was a late-comer to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, joining in 1995 ahead of the treaty’s indefinite extension. Also like Brazil, its nuclear history is far from unblemished. Predating the Brazilian program by a number of years, the Argentine nuclear program began in the early 1950s. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, between 1978 and 1990 the military junta which seized power in 1976 actively sought to construct a plutonium reprocessing plant for which no legitimate non-military use could be externally ascertained.

The long rivalry between Argentina and Brazil and their developing nuclear programs led to what many commentators described as a nascent nuclear arms race. Following the restoration of civilian rule in both countries after the early 1980s, both states undertook regional confidence-building measures, including a bi-lateral verification regime known as the Argentine-Brazilian Accounting and Control Commission (ABACC) in 1991. In the mid-1990s both countries joined the Treaty of Tlateloco, which establishes a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Latin America.

Argentina presently operates two nuclear power reactors, with a combined installed capacity of nearly one gigawatt. This capacity is similar to both Iran and Brazil. Brazil began operating a small industrial scale enrichment plant this year, intended to provide fuel for its civil nuclear program and for naval reactors. Argentina’s nuclear program is under IAEA safeguards, although neither Argentina nor Brazil have signed Additional Protocols with the IAEA, which would give the Agency the authority to inspect for undeclared and clandestine nuclear activities.

(more…)

Michael Spies

Less than a week after the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning North Korea for test launching several ballistic missiles, the United States is set to launch an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile, carrying three dummy warheads, will be fired across the Pacific toward the missile test range at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, with a flight time of about 30 minutes.

According to the Santa Maria Times, the test scheduled for early Wednesday morning is intended to test the reliability and capability of the missile system. The United States currently deploys 500 Minuteman III missiles, kept on high alert and each carrying a single nuclear warhead with a yield, depending on the configuration, of 170 kT or 335 kT, respectively 10 or 20 times more powerful than the U.S. atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

This test is the latest in an ongoing series of regularly scheduled ballistic missile tests conducted by the U.S. military. In the period between January 2000 and the present, the U.S. has test launched at least 23 Minuteman III ICBMs from Vandenberg. The last test of a Minuteman III occurred on June 14th. Regarding the purpose of the test, Andrew Lichterman pointed out that according to the 30th Space Wing, the goal was to “provide key accuracy and reliability data for on-going and future modifications to the weapon system, which are key to improving the already impressive effectiveness of the Minuteman III force.” He further noted that “as this blog has documented, this is only one small part of a wide-ranging effort to develop the next generation of U.S. strategic weapons, with the intention of being able to strike targets anywhere on earth in hours or less.”

The ongoing conduct of these tests represents yet another example of U.S. exceptionalism; the U.S. feels no embarrassment in criticizing others for the same activities it or its allies engage in. For instance, days after the North Korean tests the Bush Administration “offered an unprecedented defense and rationalization of India’s missile test and nuclear programme” following India’s test launch of a nuclear capable Agni-III missile. The tests of such weapon systems is ill-timed following the international chorus of condemnation, partially led by the U.S., of the North Korean tests. In the regional context of the Korean Peninsula, given the heightened tensions surrounding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the U.S. test of a nuclear capable missile is unambiguously provocative. In the global context, the U.S. missile test is blatant hypocrisy, symptomatic of a dangerous foreign policy based on the imposition of discriminatory, self-serving norms backed by the threat and use of force.

(more…)

Andrew Lichterman

The headlines in recent weeks have been full of the latest “threat,” this time a possible missile test by North Korea. The Bush administration has filled the airways once again with bellicose rhetoric, ranging from the now-routine “all options are on the table” to threats to shoot the missile down with U.S. ballistic missile defense interceptors. As Jeff Lewis and Victoria Sampson argue persuasively in a series of posts at Armscontrolwonk.com, the shoot-down talk is almost certainly an empty threat, intended only for consumption by those who know nothing about either ballistic missile defense or the likely trajectory of North Korean missile tests.

Not to be outdone, leading Democratic Party “national security” figures, including Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry, are suggesting a pre-emptive strike against the North Korean launch site, claiming that the outcome of this unvarnished act of aggression would be not only predictable but positive. The mainstream media and U.S. political elites seem permanently locked in a deadly symbiotic embrace: for the media, “if it bleeds it leads,” for the political elites, “if we kill it sells.” Or so it seems, more and more in this grim new American Century, where “diplomacy” seems to mean little more to those who wield American power than threatening force for a bit longer before using it.

The confrontation between the U.S. military behemoth and North Korea’s possible nuclear weapons and its still-theoretical long range missile capability works well enough, in any case, for the elites of both states, each growing progressively more isolated from the rest of the world, although in different ways. What each may fear most is their own growing irrelevance: North Korea to the world as a whole, the United States to East Asia, where convincing key states– such as Japan and South Korea–that it remains an “indispensable nation” is a critical element in slowing U.S. descent from the zenith of its power (now clearly in the rear-view mirror of the U.S. juggernaut, however much we may debate how many mileposts have passed since the peak). For North Korea, fueling up the missile (if that is what they actually are doing) gets the world’s attention by slapping the “rogue leader with nukes (maybe)” bargaining chip on the table once more, particularly with the U.S. government and its echo-chamber media playing the role of both predictable antagonist and massive message amplifier. Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger and company may have invented the “madman theory” of deterrence and diplomacy, but no one has gotten more mileage off less fuel with it than North Korea.

As for U.S. elites, the North Korean “threat,” particularly with the added fillip of an endless nuclear and missile crisis, is a good excuse for the U.S. to maintain its massive military presence in the region. It also is a major selling point for ballistic missile defense, both at home and abroad. Defenses against strategic missiles are an arms contractor’s dream: arcane, extremely expensive technology, for which there is a potentially unlimited demand, that is unlikely to be tested in any battle likely to be followed by rational debate over its success or failure. In this regard, the current round of North Korea missile-threat fear mongering may already have served its purpose. Last week the United States and Japan inked a pact for further cooperation on missile defense development, and this week Japan agreed to the deployment of Patriot 3 missiles, designed for defense against aircraft, cruise missiles, and shorter range missiles. While neither of these agreements may have been caused by the current North Korea missile test scare, they may provide useful political cover for the government of Japan, where increased cooperation with the U.S. military is controversial.

(more…)

John Burroughs

I managed to get an op-ed about the Blix report published in the June 17 Chicago Sun-Times, “This time, let’s listen to Blix on WMD.” It shouldn’t be that hard to place informed and reasonably well-written op-eds on a topic of great, arguably supreme, importance (nuclear weapons), but it is, I can say from experience over the years. The op-ed traces the U.S. rejection of disarmament commitments, observing that:

“In the longer term, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons requires reversing proliferation where it began, in the United States. We led the world into the nuclear age during World War II; now we must lead it out. Unfortunately, since the treaty banning all nuclear test explosions was negotiated in 1996, the United States has abandoned the multilateralism necessary to the exercise of leadership. The Senate rejected ratification of the treaty in 1999. In the 2000s, the Bush administration has repudiated commitments the United States made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] to work with other nations to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in security postures and to pursue verified, irreversible reduction and elimination of nuclear arsenals.”

There wasn’t space to refer to some of the unflinching statements of the Hans Blix-led Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction regarding the regressive U.S. role. Notably, the report says:

“Some of the current setbacks in treaty-based arms control and disarmament can be traced to a pattern in US policy that is sometimes called ’selective multilateralism’ - an increased US skepticism regarding the effectiveness of international institutions and instruments, coupled with a drive for freedom of action to maintain an absolute global superiority in weaponry and means of their delivery.” (p. 25)

The report also says:

“It is easy to see that the nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT have largely failed to implement this commitment [to nuclear disarmament] and failed to ‘pursue negotiations in good faith’ on nuclear disarmament as required of them under the NPT. Indeed, all states that have nuclear weapons are still seeking to modernize their nuclear capabilities.” (p. 94)

From one vantage point, that of the media-starved disarmament activist, coverage of the release of the report was pretty good. There was an excellent story in the New York Times, and Blix did interviews on Fresh Air and Meet the Press and an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune. From a more objective standpoint, it was fairly limited in extent (the Washington Post ran only a wire story, as Andrew Lichterman noted on this blog) and short in duration. There was certainly no pounding away at different aspects of the story day after day, week after week! What coverage there was seemed motivated partly by Blix’s status as a quasi-celebrity due to his role prior to the U.S. invasion as UNMOVIC chief inspector investigating alleged Iraqi programs involving biological and chemical weapons and missiles. It also tended to focus on what Blix had to say about the U.S./Iran situation.

For selected media coverage and other items regarding the report, including a summary and preliminary commentary and a list of key implications for U.S. policy, see www.wmdreport.org, the website of the project of “civil society review” of the report initiated by the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Western States Legal Foundation, and Reaching Critical Will.