We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima - or Worse

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Sat, 13 Aug 2005 03:50:28 EDT

We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima - or Worse

 

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0806-25.htm

 

Published on Saturday, August 6, 2005 by the lndependent/UK

 

We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima - or Worse

The explosions in London are a reminder of how the cycle of attack and

response could escalate

by Noam Chomsky

 

 

This month's anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

prompts only the most somber reflection and most fervent hope that the

horror may never be repeated.

 

In the subsequent 60 years, those bombings have haunted the world's

imagination but not so much as to curb the development and spread of

infinitely more lethal weapons of mass destruction.

 

A related concern, discussed in technical literature well before 11

September 2001, is that nuclear weapons may sooner or later fall into

the hands of terrorist groups.

 

The recent explosions and casualties in London are yet another

reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate,

unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima or

Nagasaki.

 

The world's reigning power accords itself the right to wage war at

will, under a doctrine of " anticipatory self-defense " that covers any

contingency it chooses. The means of destruction are to be unlimited.

 

US military expenditures approximate those of the rest of the world

combined, while arms sales by 38 North American companies (one in

Canada) account for more than 60 per cent of the world total (which

has risen 25 per cent since 2002).

 

There have been efforts to strengthen the thin thread on which

survival hangs. The most important is the nuclear Nonproliferation

Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970. The regular five-year

review conference of the NPT took place at the United Nations in May.

 

The NPT has been facing collapse, primarily because of the failure of

the nuclear states to live up to their obligation under Article VI to

pursue " good faith " efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. The United

States has led the way in refusal to abide by the Article VI

obligations. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic

Energy Agency, emphasizes that " reluctance by one party to fulfill its

obligations breeds reluctance in others " .

 

President Jimmy Carter blasted the United States as " the major culprit

in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world

from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea,

American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints

but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons,

including Anti-Ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating 'bunker

buster' and perhaps some new 'small' bombs. They also have abandoned

past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against

non-nuclear states " .

 

The thread has almost snapped in the years since Hiroshima,

repeatedly. The best known case was the Cuban missile crisis of

October 1962, " the most dangerous moment in human history " , as Arthur

Schlesinger, historian and former adviser to President John F Kennedy,

observed in October 2002 at a retrospective conference in Havana.

 

The world " came within a hair's breadth of nuclear disaster " , recalls

Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, who also attended the

retrospective. In the May-June issue of the magazine Foreign Policy,

he accompanies this reminder with a renewed warning of " apocalypse soon " .

 

McNamara regards " current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral,

illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous " , creating

" unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own " , both the risk of

" accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch " , which is " unacceptably

high " , and of nuclear attack by terrorists. McNamara endorses the

judgment of William Perry, President Bill Clinton's defense secretary,

that " there is a greater than 50 per cent probability of a nuclear

strike on US targets within a decade " .

 

Similar judgments are commonly expressed by prominent strategic

analysts. In his book Nuclear Terrorism, the Harvard international

relations specialist Graham Allison reports the " consensus in the

national security community " (of which he has been a part) that a

" dirty bomb " attack is " inevitable " , and an attack with a nuclear

weapon highly likely, if fissionable materials - the essential

ingredient - are not retrieved and secured.

 

Allison reviews the partial success of efforts to do so since the

early 1990s, under the initiatives of Senator Sam Nunn and Senator

Richard Lugar, and the setback to these programs from the first days

of the Bush administration, paralyzed by what Senator Joseph Biden

called " ideological idiocy " .

 

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programs and

devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by

extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created

in Iraq.

 

The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation

along with jihadi terrorism.

 

A high-level review of the " war on terror " two years after the

invasion " focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of

terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple of years " , Susan B

Glasser reported in The Washington Post.

 

" Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to

anticipate what one called 'the bleed out' of hundreds or thousands of

Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the

Middle East and Western Europe. 'It's a new piece of a new equation,'

a former senior Bush administration official said. 'If you don't know

who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or

London?' "

 

Peter Bergen, a US terrorism specialist, says in The Boston Globe that

" the President is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on

terrorism, but this is a front we created " .

 

Shortly after the London bombing, Chatham House, Britain's premier

foreign affairs institution, released a study drawing the obvious

conclusion - denied with outrage by the Government - that " the UK is

at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United

States, has deployed armed forces in the military campaigns to topple

the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and in Iraq ... [and is] a pillion

passenger " of American policy, sitting behind the driver of the

motorcycle.

 

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated,

but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with

equanimity. While speculation is pointless, reaction to the threat of

another Hiroshima is definitely not.

 

On the contrary, it is urgent, particularly in the United States,

because of Washington's primary role in accelerating the race to

destruction by extending its historically unique military dominance,

and in the UK, which goes along with it as its closest ally.

 

The author is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or

Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

 

© Copyright 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.