EDITORIAL Bush adds new chapter to the nuclear nightmare
In a nuclear exchange between India
and Pakistan, between 9 million and 12 million people would die and another 2
to 7 million would be injured. Unknown millions more would die of starvation,
disease and radiation. Most of the bombs would explode on the ground, spreading
radioactive debris over large areas and destroying agriculture for years. The
contamination would spread far beyond India and Pakistan.
Even a limited nuclear exchange would have cataclysmic results,
overwhelming hospitals across Asia and the Middle East and requiring vast
foreign assistance, particularly from the United Sates, which would be forced
to contend with the radioactive mess.
Thus reads the summary of a U.S. intelligence report published
last week. The scope of the tragedy defies human comprehension. Yet the
plausibility of such a nuclear exchange was likely enough to be placed on the
front page of The New York Times.
We live at a dangerous moment in world history, a time when human
knowledge has vaulted to the point of wiping out vast swaths of human
population but human wisdom only tiptoes forward against the tide. Meanwhile,
both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India and Gen. Pervez Musharraf of
Pakistan, neither man known for imagination or statesmanship, have
irresponsibly escalated the threats of war.
Coincidentally, just as the frightening possibility of a nuclear
exchange was growing, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin
signed a treaty in Moscow billed as an arms-control breakthrough. Were it only
true! In fact, the treaty is not a breakthrough and places no new constraints
on the forces spinning us forward into further madness and potentially
unimaginable destruction.
The accord reveals a startling lack of understanding of the real
dangers we face.
Consider that the agreement limits only the numbers of long-range
nuclear warheads that are deployed, or ready for use, by both sides by 2012. It
allows Russia and the United States to store as many warheads as they want. It
does not require either to destroy bombers, missiles and submarines removed
from nuclear service, and, instead, it permits both nations to re-arm those
systems with stored warheads by withdrawing from the treaty with a three-month
notice.
Both sides also remain free to keep thousands of short-range
nuclear arms, such as artillery shells, and to modernize their nuclear
arsenals. Finally, neither side will have to meet the proposed ceiling of 1,700
to 2,200 deployed warheads, a two-thirds reduction, until the last day of the
treaty at the end of 2012.
The Bush-Putin treaty represents a profound shift in four decades
of U.S-Russian arms-control efforts. During the Cold War, Moscow and Washington
spent years negotiating complex accords designed to lower the risks of a
nuclear holocaust by setting precise limits on each others nuclear
forces. To reach those limits, both nations committed themselves to destroy
missiles, submarines and bombers. The process has now stopped.
Bush insists that the new deal will liquidate the legacy of
the Cold War by overcoming lingering U.S.-Russian mistrust and
accelerating Russias integration into Western political, economic and
security arrangements. Arms-control advocates contend that the treaty will
perpetuate the U.S.-Russian nuclear rivalry and keep the door open to further
nuclear proliferation. By permitting Russia and the United States to maintain
large nuclear forces, the treaty does nothing to dissuade countries such as
Iraq, Iran and North Korea from trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is taking significant steps
toward resuming the development of new nuclear weapons as part of a
multibillion-dollar drive to upgrade the countrys aging nuclear weapons
production facilities and research laboratories.
A recent leak of a top-secret 2001 Pentagon review of U.S. nuclear
policy also revealed plans for a new U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile,
missile-firing submarine and nuclear-capable bomber. U.S. officials believe
that Russias nuclear plans include fitting three warheads on its new
intercontinental ballistic missile, known as the SS-27 or Topal M. The missile,
of which about 30 have been deployed, carries one warhead.
If this is peace preparation, what then is war?
War is madness. And wars are spawned by our collective inability
to comprehend real dangers and our inability to imagine new paths toward
lasting peace.
National Catholic Reporter, June 7,
2002
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