Nuclear disaster in the making

Ken Coates highlights the threat posed to the world's future 
by US attempts to control the proliferation of nuclear 
weapons

At a time when British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and his 
American co-thinkers of the radical right are repeatedly 
insisting that they are ready to use nuclear weapons in battle, 
even against states which do not possess such weapons, it is 
evident that the nuclear threat has notched up new levels of 
peril.

Not the least of the casualties of these warlike threats could be 
the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) which has, hitherto, 
been an assurance to non-nuclear powers that nuclear powers 
guaranteed not to use nuclear weapons against them.

Now that this guarantee has been unilaterally withdrawn by two 
nuclear powers, it is not surprising that these powers themselves 
feel that the words "non-proliferation" are more and more 
commonly being replaced by the term "counter-proliferation".

It sounds — and is intended to sound — as if this were the same 
thing. But it is not.

Non-proliferation is a voluntary agreement not to develop nuclear 
weapons, which has been underwritten by international law and a 
powerful worldwide public opinion.

Counter-proliferation, by contrast, presupposes a nuclear 
policeman, who will enforce the rule of the nuclear power over 
the non-nuclear powers.

That this enforcement will necessarily be selective is a 
consequence of the demands of international power play and will 
not make the doctrine any more coherent or plausible.

Counter-proliferation is a pick and mix policy, completely 
incompatible with any moral view of international law, which 
measures with an equal measure and judges — or should judge — 
with an equal judgement.

Of course, no worldwide forum has appointed the US to regulate 
these matters.

International law is quite clear — the only forum which is 
empowered to make this kind of decision is the United Nations 
General Assembly.

Subject to the control of that assembly, the Security Council is 
empowered to make specific decisions for determined purposes.

All this will burst into the public eye when the preparatory 
committee of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will meet at 
its review conference at the UN between April 26 and May 7.

The committee's last full meeting decided that the renewal of the 
treaty was dependent upon specific steps towards the actual 
nuclear disarmament of those nuclear powers which subscribed to 
the treaty.

Article Six of the non-proliferation treaty requires serious and 
sustained movement to the disarmament.

The legal position was very clearly summed up by the 
International Atomic Energy head Mohammed El Baradei when he 
said: "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally 
reprehensive for some countries to pursue weapons of mass 
destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely upon them 
for security, and, indeed to continue to refine their use."

In the year 2000, the NFT review conference agreed 13 practical 
steps for disarmament, which were accepted — albeit reluctantly 
— by all the states represented there.

These 13 commitments have not only not been implemented but there 
are numerous signs that they have been abandoned by those 
responsible for disarmament policy in the US and Britain.

The real and insidious nuclear proliferation is called "vertical" 
proliferation of the refinement and systematic development of the 
nuclear weapons available to major nuclear powers.

This gives rise to and necessitates mutations in nuclear 
doctrines.

The US, Russia, China, France and, as a client state of 
Washington, Britain, possess large nuclear arsenals. Israel 
probably has a larger arsenal than that of the British.

Uneasy steps towards agreed disarmament are now in abeyance and 
there is evidence of renewed competition between East and West.

The US possesses an immense nuclear capacity, which could destroy 
civilisation several times over and probably create a desert of 
the whole planet.

It is not at all an accident that the US continues to issue 
threats and to initiate research which invites other powers to 
follow suite or go to the wall.

[Western] propaganda insists that the largest danger comes from 
the weak — or "rogue" states, which might cede weapons to 
terrorists or have weapons stolen by non-state forces.

This is not altogether implausible, but here is a more likely 
story, as can be seen from the extraordinary story of Pakistan's 
remarkable relationship with other would-be nuclear powers in 
sharing the results of research and procurement of technologies 
necessary for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Abdul Qadeer Khan apparently created an amazing network which 
helped to provide machine tools or centrifuges to enrich uranium 
to a wide variety of countries. Khan headed a research 
laboratory, which acknowledged that it had supplied vital 
technique and resources to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

The precise relationship between Khan and his government, for 
whom he perfected its own bomb, is still the subject of curious 
investigation.

Meanwhile, Khan is a national hero in Pakistan.

Shahid ur-Rehman, the author of a book on the Pakistani nuclear 
program, said this about him: "Abdul Qadeer Khan was a thief, 
there is no doubt about that. But he did something that was 
almost impossible — he developed a weapon for this army that did 
what 100 F-16s (US warplanes) could never do".

The main nuclear powers would have had much greater moral 
authority in voicing their concern about this matter if they had 
taken the 13 NPT steps seriously from the beginning.

Now we are all in a mess.

Worldwide public opinion does not have an obvious focus through 
which it can express itself.

The US, with its doctrine of full spectrum dominance, is learning 
in Iraq that it is difficult if not impossible to dominate an 
ill-equipped and untrained uprising.

The British Government, which has hitched its wagon to the US 
star, is about to provide a credible simulation of the dying 
moments of a comet.

Perhaps the best hope for civil society around the world that all 
of us should lobby for the implementation of the 13 practical 
steps. 

That we should lobby for consideration of the legal, political 
and technical requirements for the abolition and dismantling of 
nuclear weapons.

That we should lobby for the development of guarantees to non-
nuclear weapons states which can make them secure from ever 
needing the services of Khan.

And that we should lobby for the refinement of criteria on 
verifying the elimination of nuclear weapons and support for 
disarmament and non-proliferation education in accordance with UN 
recommendations.

A practical move in this direction was begun by the handful of 
marchers in England who bravely revived the pilgrimage to 
Aldermaston at Easter. They certainly followed the maxim "never 
follow a multitude to evil".

It is enormously important that this kind of agitation should 
step up, rendering the obligatory CND [Campaign for Nuclear 
Disarmament] badges, which used to be worn by all members of the 
present government, once again indispensable to anyone engaged in 
public life.

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Ken Coates is
Chairman of The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
Morning Star