Why the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is collapsing

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The government of north Korea has now withdrawn from the  Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty. India and Pakistan have developed nuclear weapons.
Other countries are on the way.

The Cuban government, which has rejected
using its very scarce resources to develop nuclear weapons in favor of
organizing the entire population to defend the country,  has signed the
treaty while protesting its unfairness to the countries of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva has also rejected
the idea of Brazil developing nuclear weapons while also criticizing the
treaty as discriminatory..

South Africa, which developed nuclear weapons under the apartheid regime
with the covert support of the United States and Israel, is the only country
in the world today that has carried out nuclear disarmament.

Why is the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty collapsing today? Jim Hoagland,
in an column in the January 9 Washington Post entitled, "Nearing the Nuclear
Jungle," takes a
pretty standard mainstream media view of the reason: inadequate enforcement
by the United States and its allies against rogue states like North Korea.

His problem begins with the title.  The nuclear jungle isn't nearing.  It
has been here since August 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs
on heavily populated Japanese cities.

The United States government  now attempts to force supposedly "evil"
countries
to drop actual or potential nuclear weapons programs by economic pressure
and threats of war -- while the U.S. government insists that the treaty
imposes nothing on it but the duty of  threatening
others.  But this doesn't seem to be working at all consistently.

Is it really true that the reason  other nations seek nuclear weapons
is that they have  "evil" leaders in contrast to
the "good" leaders possessed by the thrice-blessed  USA?  Would the world
Jim
Hoagland and others seem to be dreaming of, in which only the United States
and its
allies such as Britain and Israel would have nuclear weapons, be a safer one
for the human race?

Consider what the people and governments in Iran and other countries have to
think about when they see Iraq  being bombed and on the verge of being
massively invaded and its
national resources plundered by the United States.  The U.S.rulers say they
may use nuclear weapons against Iraq, a country that has no nuclear weapons
and has been largely disarmed by the United Nations, if they meet more
resistance than they can handle or higher casualties than they count on, or
even just to strike at structures that are too well constructed to be
reliably destroyed by other means.  They have poisoned thousands of Iraqis
with depleted uranium weapons.

U.S. nuclear weapons are also pointed at north Korea, and the U.S. has long
had a policy allowing use of nuclear weapons in the event of a civil war on
the peninsula, whether or not the regime in the north had nuclear weapons.

Isn't that a ather strong argument for  potential targets of  the U.S.
rulers  -- Iran, Korea, and
others yet unthought of (not to mention  current imperialist allies,
competitors,  and  historical rivals of the United States like Japan and
Germany) -- to get their own nuclear weapons arsenals
as quickly as possible and by any means necessary?

Should other countries  really buy the claim that their countries will be
safer if the United States, the only really "moral" country,  is able to
point
nuclear weapons at them, while the policy wonks debate the range of
circumstances in which the U.S. should use them (and the debates over
using chemical and biological weapons are also taking place)?

 The potential targets of these weapons are supposed to be "morally obliged"
to choose  between accepting  U.S.dictates or taking the consequences
without the possibility of either nuclear deterrence or retaliation..

A government hardly has to be led by Dr. Evil in order to decide to develop
a nuclear arsenal under these circumstances.  The Roosevelt administration
had far less provocation for developing the atom bomb, and the  Truman
administration far less for using them.  Both in the cases of Japan
yesterday and Iraq today, the use of nuclear weapons is presented by U.S.
officials  as a justifiable  deterrent or response to high U.S. casualties
or to accepting  settlements short of total victory.

In the end, the other governments and peoples of the world are not going to
buy
this "nuclear disarmament for them only" scam, and the United States
government is
not strong enough to force them to do otherwise -- a good thing, in my
opinion.  Hoagland's dream that anyone the United States labels as "evil"
can be forbidden to have weapons of mass destruction possessed by the United
States and its allies is a utopia -- and not a pretty one.

The development and spread of nuclear weapons is a real and terrible danger
to the world, but that proliferation, including the use of nuclear weapons
in a  first strike against Japan, started with the United States and real
nuclear disarmament -- disarmament
that will have credibility in the eyes of the governments and peoples of the
world -- is going to have to begin there too.
Fred Feldman



Nearing a Nuclear Jungle

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, January 9, 2003 Washington Post; Page A25

The initial reaction to the North Korean nuclear breakout is to focus
almost exclusively on the unpalatable choices available



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