Column U.S. still itches for nukes
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
When President Reagan announced
Star Wars in 1983, most arms control observers predicted that it
would quickly collapse from its inherent weakness. The idea that the United
States could construct a device that would shoot down incoming nuclear missiles
was deemed to be preposterous.
Many thought the Strategic Defense Initiative would disappear when
Clintons first Secretary of Defense, former Congressman Les Aspin,
declared it dead.
But the idea is still around. It is advocated by the Defense
Department and seemingly has the approval of President Clinton. The arms
control world and the entire European Community, including Russia, are
opposed.
The major argument against Reagans proposal of a shield
against incoming missiles was that it violated the 1972 anti-ballistic missile
- ABM - treaty, in which both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed not
to build a comprehensive defense against the others long-range nuclear
arsenal. The agreement was based on the assumption that neither superpower
would use its nuclear weapons since this would trigger mutually assured
destruction.
The theory worked and probably helped to bring about the demise of
the Soviet Union. That welcome event prompted the defenders of nuclear weapons
to invent the threat of rogue nations like Libya, North Korea and
Iran that could create nuclear weapons that would threaten the United
States.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which has opposed Star
Wars since its inception, argues that if any rogue nation is
scientifically developed enough to launch a nuclear missile, it would also be
sophisticated enough to make decoys capable of fooling the interceptors that
are designed to shoot down the missile. The demonization of the
rogue nations has received remarkably little attention or analysis
by the press or the public.
It is unclear whether the missile shield will be an issue in the
presidential campaign. Texas Gov. George W. Bush has said that as president he
would deploy anti-missile defenses as soon as possible.
If the national missile defense had not been proposed in the last
years of the Soviet Union it would be inconceivable that it would be proposed
today. But 40 years of opposing the evil empire is too much a part
of the psyche of the hawks in Congress and at the Pentagon for them to think
that nuclear weapons could be obsolete and unnecessary.
Hence the itch - indeed the addiction - for the use of weapons of
mass destruction goes on. The addiction is so strong that its adherents will
not even agree to the banning of all tests as proposed in the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty.
The United States seems to have a reckless streak in its claim
that its military power should operate outside the constraints of international
security. Some U.S.-elected officials want the United States to be a lone
ranger unencumbered by normal and accepted methods of international
diplomacy.
There are other issues in the international order where the United
States refuses to carry out its duties. The United States has 260,000 military
personnel stationed worldwide but it has only 34 persons assigned to the 29,286
U.N. peacekeepers in the field - the highest number since 1995.
The United States continues to evade its duties to the potential
victims of the 80 million land mines hidden in 65 nations. President Clinton
continues to delay signing the International Treaty on Landmines, now
subscribed to by 138 countries. Every 22 minutes there is a new victim of these
indiscriminate weapons.
The United States refused to join the International Criminal
Court, which is on its way to being ratified by a majority of nations. The
United States is openly seeking to weaken the court by claiming that it would
not offer adequate protection to U.S. troops around the world. However, the
court explicitly provides that no national of any country will be tried by the
court if the country of origin will try him or her for the alleged
international crimes.
Resistance to some international norms has always been present in
some areas of the U.S. electorate. The United States present embrace of
Star Wars constitutes a classic case of that neglect and defiance
of world law.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center. His e-mail address is
DEROSA@wpgate.law3.georgetown.edu
National Catholic Reporter, July 28,
2000
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