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US' policy encourages proliferation of nuclear weapons
***The policy "do what we say and don't do what we do" of the Bush administration is not doing any good to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. There is a strong perception in international community that threats to stability and security are emanating from the new American policy and not from "rogue states". The US may well be advised to shun its research and development of new nuclear weapons and revert back to multi-lateral consensus-based approach to prevent dissemination of nuclear weapons under the provisions of the NPT.***
THE Bush administration made it clear that there should be no spread of weapons of mass destruction that includes atomic, biological and chemical weapons (otherwise known as ABC weapons) because they endanger international peace and security. The probability of terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapons is increased as more countries acquire them. According to the 2002 estimate by the US Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Russia has 8,600 nuclear weapons, the US 8,000, China 400, France 350, Britain 200, Israel 200, Pakistan 48, India 35.
The US government leaders through their not infrequent statements urged North Korea to halt immediately its nuclear programme, although by this time Pyongyang has reportedly managed to produce anywhere between three to six nuclear warheads. Iran is under strict surveillance of the US so that they cannot produce nuclear weapons from the uranium enrichment plants being built by Russia. The uranium enrichment plants could produce nuclear weapons grade fissile material. Iran declared that it would use nuclear plants for development, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes consistent with Article 5 of the 1968 Nuclear Weapons NonProliferation Treaty (NPT).
No country ordinarily wants to
manufacture nuclear weapons because (a) they are expensive and time-consuming to produce and (b) they pose danger to safety of the country because of the insufficient means of disposal of nuclear radioactive wastes that last for at least thousand years even if buried in the underground. The recent looting of radioactive materials in Iraq has posed great health hazards to Iraqi people and the UN IAEA inspectors have been allowed in Iraq on 6 June by the US to find out how much materials have been stolen or looted.
Consistent with the NPT provisions, many countries including Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Japan have decided not to acquire nuclear weapons although they have enough scientists and material resources to produce such weapons. Until this date about 180 countries including Bangladesh have rejected nuclear option under the NPT.
Although the NPT is discriminatory because it allows five countries namely, US, Britain, China, France and Russia to have nuclear weapons, each nuclear weapon-state under the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating "to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control" (Article 6 of the Treaty).
On 7 August 1996, a group of NonAligned states including Bangladesh tabled a three-phase proposal to the UN Committee on Disarmament in Geneva. However, all five nuclear weapon states remain uncomfortable with permanently ending nuclear weapons and the proposal could not proceed further. All the five countries refuse to begin negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons, proclaiming that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent to any armed attack and this appears to be an element to their defence policies for the foreseeable future.
The resistance of the Bush admin-
istration in horizontal expansion of nuclear weapons is understandable but its actions do not reflect this commitment. On May 1, 2001 President Bush declared : "Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play in our security." This was well before the September 11 attacks. The Bush administration's reliance on nuclear weapons has threatened to inflict irreparable damage to the nonproliferation regime contemplated by the 1968 Treaty.
In early 2002, referring to the Bush administration, Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in the US, said that "Not since the early 1980s and the admin-
istration of Ronald Reagan has a US President placed such high priority on nuclear weapons." Similar sentiment was expressed by William Arkin, a senior Fellow at the John Hopkins University when he stated that "the administration is reversing an almost two-decade-long trend of relegating nuclear weapons to the category of the weapons-of-last-resort". The New York Times blasted that " If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating preemptive strikes against a list of nonnuclear powers Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state".
In the classified version of the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review, leaked in The Los Angeles Times in 2002, it set out the direction for the nuclear arsenal over the next decade. First it flagged the need for smaller nuclear bombs with less fallout designed to penetrate underground bunkers in which command centers or stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction might be held. Second and most controversially it urged contingency plans for strikes on Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya as well as nuclear powers China and Russia. It also alluded to Pakistan and India, saying a "sudden regime change" in an existing nuclear power could also require a nuclear response. What concerned experts was that the strategy sought to integrate conventional forces and weapons into a nuclear war plan that envisaged small nuclear bombs -- all of which made their use more likely.
Quizzed on the leaked document, President Bush reportedly told that "all options on the table" were being considered to ensure no country threatened the US with weapons of mass destruction. The Russians have mixed feelings about the twists in US nuclear policy. According to the US Centre for Defence Information, the US and Russia retain 16,600 intact nuclear warheads and despite the Moscow Treaty of May 2002 on reduction of nuclear arms, they intend holding on to them. The Treaty has recently been ratified by both countries during the visit of
President Bush in St. Petersburg early this month.
In addition to the increasing reliance on nuclear weapons by the US, the muscular approach of the US towards Iraq has raised security concerns of many states. Many believe that the unprovoked war on Iraq could not have been launched if Iraq had the nuclear weapons. (In 1981 Israel in a pre-emptive strike destroyed the nuclear reactor in Osirak in Iraq and later such action was condemned by the UN Security Council as a gross violation of Iraq's sovereignty). North Korea's Foreign Minister said that "Iraqi war shows…..that only tremendous military deterrent force can prevent attacks that America dislikes."
It appears that many countries that shunned in the past nuclear weapons are coming to a view that possession of nuclear weapons can only avert war from the US and it is likely that nuclear proliferation will be on the rise. The NPT is not something that is sacred. Any party can withdraw from the Treaty under Article 10 in theinterest of the country and only three months' notice is required. North Korea is the only country so far that has withdrawn from the NPT.
The policy of the Bush administration on nuclear proliferation appears to be full of contradictions. On one hand it is determined to ensure nuclear non-proliferation, on the other hand it has engaged itself to produce new "smart" nuclear weapons and use them if necessary (similar to the one demanding "zero tolerance" on marijuana but happily accepting millions of dollars from alcohol and tobacco lobbyists in the US). Some say that the US does not intend to become a nuclear "Gulliver" tied down by a UN coalition of "Lilliputians". Furthermore it is prepared to tolerate some countries to possess nuclear warheads because, as The New York Times recently said, "There are no bad weapons, only bad regimes". To this way of thinking Israel's nuclear weapons are good.
The policy "do what we say and
don't do what we do" of the Bush administration is not doing any good to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. There is a strong perception in international community that threats to stability and security are emanating from the new American policy and not from "rogue states". The US may well be advised to shun its research and development of new nuclear weapons and revert back to multi-lateral consensus-based approach to prevent dissemination of nuclear weapons under the provisions of the NPT.
That is of course a big asking from the Bush administration. However, if the US fast-food chain McDonald's can lose money, nothing is unusual. If the administration's policy changes, states that perceive that their security is threatened by the unprovoked war on Iraq and are desirous of producing nuclear weapons are most likely not to opt for nuclear weapons.
Would that the US could be so wise to change its policy?
Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva