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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Imaging tomorrow (2):
Nukes are here to stay
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
In my article last week, I spoke of a new polarity that has emerged on the global stage between the architects and guardians of the new world order on the one side and underground forces alienated from and violently opposed to that order on the other. With those forces constituting a pole that is not bound by international legality, and with a thriving black market for weapons of mass destruction, these weapons are unlikely to disappear any time soon, even if test-ban and non-proliferation treaties are ratified by all the states in the world without exception.
After the collapse of the bipolar world order, it was believed for a while that the unipolar world order which replaced it would dispense with the need for weapons of mass destruction and set in motion new dynamics that would gradually eliminate them. But hopes in that direction did not materialise. If anything, the destructive capability of those weapons is on the rise rather than the opposite. A Damocles sword poised on the neck of the human race, the magnitude of the threat they pose cannot be overstated.
Under the previous bipolar world order, access to weapons of mass destruction was limited to the superpowers and a handful of advanced states. That is no longer the case. So far, the pole we describe as global terrorism has been waging a form of low-intensity warfare against the system, but this could well change given the ready availability of weapons of mass destruction which can now be purchased on a black market well stocked with weapons, whether stolen from the former Soviet Union or hijacked by terrorist groups.
Then there is the fact that nuclear technology is no longer a jealously guarded secret to which only a limited number of the most advanced countries are privy. Even a non-developed country is now capable of acquiring that technology, as evidenced by Pakistan's recent nuclear blasts. Nor is the new trend likely to stop there. Other developing countries now enjoy nuclear capability or are in the process of turning nuclear.
Indeed, the complicating factor in Iraq's relationship with the United Nations is that two great powers in the Security Council -- the US and the UK -- are convinced Baghdad has not abandoned its nuclear ambitions, and insist that UN inspections continue until all the facilities that can help it fulfill those ambitions have been completely destroyed. And, with Israel's "secret" nuclear arsenal serving as an incentive for neighbouring states to build up their own nuclear arsenals, the Iraqi situation could well become generalised to other Third World countries.
Then there are the non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the biological and chemical weapons that are sometimes described as the weapons of the poor because they can be manufactured in ordinary laboratories with modest resources. These weapons, which do not require a sophisticated technology, will become ever more potent as scientists continue to unlock the secrets of genetic engineering, cloning and other fields of scientific endeavour, paving the way for new generations of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction that can neither be easily detected nor subjected to international monitoring.
However, the most fertile source for the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated and deadly weapons of mass destruction is the state of progress achieved by science and technology as a whole in recent years. Thanks to modern technology, we can now explore the micro- and macro-worlds lying beyond the realm of our five senses through instruments based on mathematical formulae. But abstract formulae which cannot be empirically tested are not foolproof and can induce us into misinterpreting facts and phenomena. Errors of this kind can have disastrous consequences when it comes to the manufacture and use of weapons of mass destruction.
The only possible conclusion to be drawn from the lack of any concerted international effort to eliminate weapons of mass destruction is that the present world order is not rally interested in doing away with them altogether. We seem to have reached a point of no return where weapons of mass destruction are concerned, a point from which we can neither go back to the time when those weapons had not been invented nor forward to new and deadlier versions. Rather, the trend seem to be to maintain a certain precarious balance between an uncontrolled arms race that would allow bona fide members of the nuclear club to develop their overkill capability beyond acceptable limits, and a total ban on the production of those weapons which would leave world order totally defenseless against terrorist gangs now capable of manufacturing, buying or even stealing such weapons.
The optimal solution thus seems to be perceived by the guardians of the new world order as lying somewhere between these two extremes, an option that to my mind carries unacceptable risks. The premise from which I believe we should proceed on the question of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in general is what has for long been the avowed stand of India, which denounced 'nuclear apartheid' and called for the gradual elimination of all weapons of mass destruction. This is all the more necessary at a time weaponry of all kinds can be acquired, in one way or another, by the counter pole to world order.
How to solve the dilemma? Is it possible to totally eradicate weapons of mass destruction including those that could fall into the hands of organised groups acting outside the bounds of world order and international legality? Is the continued possession of nuclear weaponry necessary to deter others from using weapons of mass destruction against world order? Would it be possible to invent monitoring devices that could trace and disarm banned weapons before they could be used by illegal groups rather than continue to rely on the nuclear deterrent? Can preemptive diplomacy prevent blunders in this regard that would expose humankind to intolerable risk?
It seems to me that there is no technical solution to this dilemma. The solution must be political and institutional. Political bipolarity between a legitimate pole within world order and the illegitimate pole of international terrorism outside world order must be overcome to bring our dilemma to an end. This is a solution that will need decades to implement. In the meantime, we are unlikely to see the elimination of weapons of mass destruction any time soon.
