Nonviolent Change Journal

PREVENTING NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION IN THE RIGHT WAY
Stephen Sachs, IUPUI
Stopping the spread of atomic weapons is clearly an important goal for the world and the United States. With India and Pakistan having nuclear weapons, the recent acute threat of war between those nations was much more dangerous to their populations, South Asia and the whole world, than previous military confrontations between those nations had been. The more nations with such weapons, the more chance of their being used with gruesome consequences. Moreover, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakening of the Russian economy and military have caused many people to worry, there is a danger that nuclear weapons may be gotten out of a nation's arsenal and into the hands of a country, group or individual who will use them. That possibility grows the greater the number of nations posses such weapons, particularly when the nuclear club expands to include unstable and economically hard pressed states. The latter is a particular concern with North Korea building atomic bombs. Many analysts believe there is little chance that country would use those weapons to start a war, but fear that, in its current state of economic collapse, North Korea might sell those weapons, and that they might eventually find there way into the hands of terrorists. Moreover, if North Korea has atomic weapons, than Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are likely to rush to develop them, just as India's nuclear development stimulated Pakistan to build its own bombs. Thus proliferation encourages more proliferation.

For many years the United Nations, with U.S. support, has had a program aimed at stopping nuclear proliferation, including an international agreement signed by many, but not all, nations, and some international inspection. While having some restraining effect, this effort has not been strong enough to prevent a number of nations from developing the capability to make atomic bombs, including Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Africa, which is the only nation so far to give up that capacity.

One part of the problem is that simpler atomic bombs, with explosive power in the general range of the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, are technically relatively easy to build. Indeed, in the early 1960s some physics students at the University of Chicago shocked government inspectors who walked in to a lab to find a full scale model of an atomic bomb. Fortunately, the materials for making a bomb are not so easy to obtain and/or process. A considerable portion of the information on how to manufacture the far more powerful hydrogen bombs (the setting off of about 200 of which could bring about a human civilization destroying nuclear winter), is also widely known, but even if known fully, could only be taken advantage of to build such weapons, given the current development of technology, with a very extensive industrial complex that is financially beyond the reach of most nations.

Currently, the United States is undermining its attempt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons with two other sets of actions. The first set of policy initiatives of the current administration is its move to expand the number of nuclear weapons it has, to develop new nuclear bombs - perhaps renewing atomic testing - and to be prepared to use some special and smaller atomic explosives, such as developing and deploying nuclear bunker busting bombs for destroying hardened and deep underground military targets. If the United States is prepared to use atomic munitions, that will set a practical and moral precedent for having and using them. Other nations will be even more encouraged that using such weaponry is O.K. if the U.S. actually uses them.

It might be that if only smaller nuclear devices were used for special purposes, such as for smashing or breaking into deep underground facilities, that the initial precedent might only be for utilizing such nonconventional weapons in similar ways. But the current clear line between nuclear and conventional weapons would be blurred, significantly, so that limited use over time would probably legitimate general use, eventually.

Officials of many nations have said that they do not see why their countries should not have nuclear arsenals if other nations do. It was only by agreeing to eventually get rid of their own stockpiles of atomic weaponry that the major atomic powers could obtain support at the United Nations for a program to stop nuclear proliferation. When the U.S. plans to develop and possibly use new atomic hardware, it only encourages others to develop their own nuclear capability. The same is true when the U.S. expands the number of these weapons. Thus, instead of making agreements with Russia that allow decommissioned warheads to be stored (and possibly later redeployed), the protocol should be to destroy them.

Although not much has been heard about this from the Pentagon during the current administration, for some years a number of top U.S. military officers have been saying that the United States would be better off to be rid of its atomic weapons, if other nations got rid of theirs also, with proper verification that that was the case. These generals and admirals said that the U.S. military would have all that it needed in its conventional arsenal, if it did not face nuclear armaments in the hands of others. Indeed, some conventional bombs have more power than the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. What needs to be done then, is to lead in a collective reduction of the amount of existing atomic weaponry by showing real willingness to join others in doing so, and to strengthen collective international ability to stop proliferation, effectively.

This brings in the second point. Only collective action on nonproliferation can be accepted internationally, and that requires building a climate of international collaboration. When the United States takes, or threatens to take, unilateral (or with only a few allies, virtually unilateral) military action, particularly in the name of insuring that a nation or nation does not have weapons of mass destruction, that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to move toward nonproliferation, as the recent U.S. troubles in gaining approval on action on Iraq, demonstrate. Moreover, if the U.S., as the only super power, appears arrogant and potentially dangerous to other countries that can not match the U.S. conventionally, then those nations are going to want to obtain a nuclear veto. Thus, it is in the interest of the United States to use its power with restraint, especially where weapons of mass destruction are concerned, together with taking leadership in developing collective international means of effective preventive action.

These articles and opinions of the authors do not constitute the endorsement of Nonviolent Change nor its publisher, the Research/Action Team on Nonviolent Large Systems Change - an interorganizational and international project of The Organization Development Institute, or any of its staff, nor of CirclePoint which is housing the Nonviolent Change Journal.

©2002, 2003. All rights reserve. The Nonviolent Change Journal is published by the Research/Action Team on Nonviolent Large Systems Change - an interorganizational and international project of The Organization Development Institute.

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