Nukes

When I was in grade school in the 1950s, the air raid sirens sounded every Wednesday at noon and we got under our desks and covered our heads. Never mind what the newsreels showed of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those sturdy Catholic school desks would save us from the Atomic Bomb.

The A-Bombs dropped on Japan had powers between 12,000 and 22,000 tons of TNT. Though that wallop was enough to make even the super-militaristic Japanese government unconditionally surrender, the prevailing powers in WWII embarked on a cold war arms race, with one result being the development of a Hydrogen Bomb with a force thousands of times more than that of the A-Bomb.

As any student of history or player of video war games can verify, war (even a cold one), accelerates weapons development, and all developed weapons eventually get used in war. The H-Bomb has not yet been used in War, though in 1961 the Russians tested the Tsar Bomb with the power of 50,000,000 tons of TNT, enough power to devastate 2,000 to 4,000 Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. The A and H bombs are now called “nuclear” [or “nukular” by George W. Bush], an acceptably inclusive scientific term, and a politically useful euphemism to describe our weaponry [the Bush Administration uses the even more inclusive, and sometimes phantasmal, “weapons of mass destruction” to describe the arsenal of its enemies].

To our credit, the human race had enough sense to start the United Nations after WWII, though the five victorious “super powers” insisted on undemocratic veto rights. We also eventually realized that nuclear weapon development and testing had crossed the line of absurdity and needed to be scaled back and eventually eliminated completely. First came a ban on testing in the atmosphere and then in 1970 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], under which the “super five” were to have a monopoly on nukes in return for agreeing to let the little guys in on the ways to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Under NPT Article VI the supers also agreed to pursue good faith efforts to eliminate all nuclear weapons, a provision totally ignored by the Bush Administration but recently called to its attention by the President of Iran.

The NPT has been agreed to by 187 nations, with three notable exceptions, each one of which has now joined the nuclear club: Israel (which has never admitted its 1967 acquisition, in spite of UN Resolution 487 requiring it to do so); India in 1974; and Pakistan in 1998 (leading to US sanctions, lifted after 9/11 in order to get cooperation for invading Afghanistan). Iran has strained NPT interpretation to justify its pursuit of nukes, while North Korea is simply defying the NPT and claiming to have withdrawn from it.

The Bush Administration deserves much of the blame for Iran and N. Korea vigorously pursuing nukes in self-defense, because Bush has proven his penchant for war, has declared a right to preemptive strike claimed to be justified even when the supposed basis for the strike proved to be false, and has provocatively labeled Iran and N. Korea as evil enemies of America.

Post-Bush, and hopefully starting with a Democratic Congress next year, the US should take the lead in bringing NPT Article VI back to life, by encouraging the major nuclear powers to join in stopping any further nuclear weapons development and beginning a systematic program of nuclear disarmament. Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has wisely advocated limiting to facilities under multinational control all production and processing of nuclear materials capable of being used in weapons. This could be in conjunction with a Fissionable Materials Cutoff Treaty as called for in a 1993 UN Resolution.

The nations of the Earth need to close the nuclear Pandora’s box before more horrors emerge. Cap production and processing, disarm stockpiles, bring India, Pakistan and Israel into the NPT, rein in Iran and N. Korea, and seriously consider whether large scale uses of nuclear power for energy production are worth the environmental risks.

To get a graphic image of the extent of the US nuclear arsenal, check out this video from True Majority, featuring Ben of Ben and Jerry’s.