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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Pax Americana goes nukes
By Lamis AndoniA crucial three-week United Nations conference to review stalled efforts for nuclear disarmament has been plunged into further uncertainty by US attempts to "modify" the 1970 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in order to clear the way for a controversial national defence system. Washington claims that the "modification," which needs to be approved by Russia, would enhance international security; but critics warn that the move could unravel an already deadlocked Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"The persistent determination of the nuclear weapon states to safeguard their security through nuclear deterrence has given them an excuse to continue the development of new weapons and the modernisation of their own arsenals," claimed Daudi Mwakawago, Tanzania's representative to the NPT meeting in New York. "Those who possessed such [nuclear deterrence] weapons could not deter other countries from joining the 'club' using the same argument of deterrence," Mwakawago added, echoing the wide-spread resentment held by non-nuclear countries toward the declared American proposal.
By proceeding with its envisaged plan -- purportedly to protect the US from "terrorist" threats and attacks by so-called rogue states, like Korea, Iraq and Iran -- Washington appears light years away from the tone and direction of the discourse dominating the NPT review meeting. While participants at the New York meeting are advocating the creation of nuclear weapon-free zones, Washington is gripped in internal conflict over the scale and the size of its national missile defence system.
The administration is seeking changes in the landmark ABM agreement to allow the deployment of 100 new launchers, which it says will not be aimed at Russia. Conservative Republicans, spearheaded by Senator Jesse Helms, argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union rendered the treaty effectively obsolete and consequently reject a new agreement limiting expansion of the national missile defence system. Late last year the US Senate declined the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), dealing a serious setback to efforts to prevent the spreading of nuclear weaponry.
So while the NPT review meeting has been discussing means to enforce disarmament commitments from the five Nuclear Weapon States and pressuring Israel, India and Pakistan to join NPT and sign the CTBT, the US is taking steps to expand its own arsenal. India and Pakistan, who exchanged nuclear tests in 1998, have described the two treaties as discriminatory because they allow the major nuclear weapon states to continue to develop their nuclear programmes.
The 1970 ABM treaty gives the first five nuclear countries -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- a monopoly on nuclear weapons, on the understanding that they will negotiate in good faith to dismantle them. The New Agenda Coalition, an alliance of seven non-nuclear countries, was formed in 1995 to pressure the nuclear states into faster action.
The countries -- Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand -- were alarmed by prospects of arms proliferation, triggered by uni- and multilateral military actions sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, such as the bombing of Iraq and the Kosovo War. The coalition calls for nuclear weapon states to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, separate warheads from missiles and take missiles off high-alert.
The end of the Cold War a decade ago raised expectations of an end to the arms race and an acceleration of nuclear disarmament. But the post-Cold War reality that emerged failed to produce the anticipated cooperative global security system. The US and other nuclear countries argue that new threats by "terrorists" and "rogue states" call for maintaining nuclear deterrence -- the same argument used to justify the US demand for adjusting the ABM treaty.
Prominent experts and even disarmament diplomats challenge this argument. The Bulletin for Atomic Scientist (BAS), the specialised disarmament publication that first disclosed Washington's proposal to amend the ABM treaty, published a series of articles challenging the need for a national defence system.
"Strengthen nuclear deterrence? The US already has the most sophisticated and expensive arsenal in the world, with more than 12,000 nuclear weapons of nine distinct designs refined through 1,030 nuclear tests conducted over 47 years and maintained by an elaborate scientific complex, with tens of thousands of scientists and technicians," wrote Joseph Cirincione, in the publication's February issue.
But strengthening nuclear deterrence remains the prevailing argument by the White House and Congress alike and is rarely challenged by the mainstream American media, which is used to justifying or ignoring selective enforcement of laws and treaties.
In the words of the Canadian senator and former Canadian ambassador for disarmament, Douglas Rocheit, it becomes a question of who determines the rule of law. "Nuclear weapons, like the Kosovo war, are about the rule of law. How will international law be imposed in the years ahead? By the militarily powerful determining what the law will be? Or by a collective world effort reposing the seat of law in the United Nations system," Rocheit said in an NPT report in 1999.
