THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504180538
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 357 lines
It's been 50 years since the U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan that launched the atomic age, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
The superpower arms race spawned by the Cold War is over, yet humanity still lives with the threat posed by these immensely powerful weapons: Eight nations are known to maintain nuclear inventories, and at least eight more are suspected of developing them.
This month, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - the landmark international agreement that has helped keep a lid on the nuclear menace for the past 25 years - comes up for renewal. After some diplomatic arm-twisting, it now appears that a majority of the signers will vote to renew it.
But that alone won't eliminate the threat, as was made clear when a panel of Hampton Roads authorities on nuclear proliferation gathered last week to discuss the issue.
Can the nuclear genie be wrestled back into the bottle? The group was divided on that question. But there was general agreement that the issue requires some new thinking and a lot of hard work.
The discussion, moderated by Bill Sizemore of The Virginian-Pilot's Global Team, was one in a continuing monthly series of talks on national and international issues. The discussions are co-sponsored by public radio station WHRV, 89.5 FM.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's chances may be looking a little better now than they were even a few weeks ago, but it's still not an absolutely sure thing. Why was this treaty in danger? Is it still in danger?
Aaron Karp: I think we're looking at a lot of different problems here. The NPT itself is in many ways more secure than ever before. It has been gaining signatories in the past few years at a rapid rate. Nations are literally racing to sign this agreement. You now have about 174 signatories to the treaty, which makes it by far the most broadly subscribed of all international arms control agreements.
The problem you have is from a few countries, some who are outside the treaty altogether, who are very unhappy with it and would like to see it eliminated and replaced with a global disarmament scheme, and a few countries within it that would like to see it turned into more of a disarmament treaty.
What is at the heart of their objections to this treaty as it now stands - the nonnuclear nations, that is?
Regina Karp: Some of the criticisms of the NPT focus very much on commitments that are embedded in the treaty and that were undertaken by the then-existing, and still existing, five nuclear weapon states - Britain, France, China, the United States and Russia - to pursue in good faith processes that would lead to general and complete disarmament. . . .
If you look at the numbers that come out of the latest arms control negotiations between Russia and the United States, the so-called START II treaty, once it has been implemented at the turn of the century, you would still only get back to weapons levels that we had when the treaty was signed and entered into force in 1970, which is around 6,000 to 7,000 nuclear weapons. So the argument can be made that we have made no progress. . . .
Al Schy: . . . Right now, there are almost 46,000 nuclear weapons in the world . . .
Article 6 says, of course, the major nuclear powers are committed to nuclear disarmament. Otherwise, what sense does it make for the other parties not to get nukes? Because there's this strange psychological attraction that says you aren't a major power if you don't have these nuclear weapons. That's really strange when you think about what nuclear weapons have done to the U.S.S.R. Destroyed their economy, and now they don't know what to do and how to get rid of them. And we are almost in the same condition. . . . Even though it's one of the most important problems in the world today, we aren't putting the kind of effort into it that it deserves.
How does the question of our nuclear arsenal and our treaty obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward disarmament - how does that all fit into current U.S. doctrine and military planning?
Lt. Col. Tony Daniels: OK, first of all, I'd like to take issue with my colleagues here in that we have made great strides toward disarmament. The weapons you're talking about are strategic nuclear weapons, which are not the vast majority of the weapons that are in the inventory. The vast majority of the weapons in the inventory were the tactical nuclear weapons, and we have made great strides in reducing the tactical nuclear weapons, both us and the Russians and all the republics. . . .
I'd like to also point out that for the past 50 years, this arsenal that people are afraid of has maintained the peace. We, the United States of America, and the Soviet Union have never engaged in a conflict directly. . .
The other thing is, I would advise caution. The weapons are not gone. There are a lot of weapons in the world. Everything is not well in the world. Yes, the Cold War is over, but things change. . . .
Aaron Karp: Everything you said is true. The United States and Russia together have accomplished amazing things in arms control and disarmament the last few years. The problem is that the goalposts keep moving. . . . If we'd accomplished the kinds of things that have been done in the last five years, 20 years ago, everyone would have thought it miraculous and been amazed. . . . Nowadays, it's just not good enough, though. . . .
Regina Karp: . . . It would have been surprising had we not made as much progress as we had during the last five years, now that the Cold War is over.
I think we need a final goal with regard to the process.
Are we going to sit back and say . . . there is no longer any obligation on the part of nuclear weapons states to move the disarmament process forward? future of nuclear weapons and the role they play in international politics, we need to have a vision of what the end-game is going to be. Is the end-game going to be that some countries will be allowed to have nuclear weapons and others are not? Or is the end-game going to be a different understanding of the basis of international security? . . .
Schy: . . . We have done a lot, a tremendous amount. The problem is what Mrs. Karp just said, that we have to recognize the end-game.
You (Daniels) said something that was a little inconsistent with what I think the end-game should be. In other words, you brought up the well-known idea that nuclear weapons have kept the peace. I don't believe that. They may have helped a little bit in keeping the peace, but I think any good study of history will show that Russia never had the capacity or the ability to attack Western Europe.
Justifying nuclear weapons as having kept the peace is really tremendously far-fetched for this obvious reason. (Robert) McNamara had a study done as the secretary of defense. How many weapons do we need to totally wipe out any target we need in the U.S.S.R.? The answer was 600. Where did we get 20,000 or more? . . .
Daniels: . . . We need to go to the goal you spoke of, which is total disarmament. But we need to do that carefully and be mindful of the actors that we're dealing with out there. . . .
Regina Karp: On the question of disarmament, I'm very glad we agree on the ultimate goal. But it does strike me that even if one agrees with people on the ultimate goal, there is still a great deal of difference as to how rapidly and what processes one would want to employ. . . .
I think a good case can be made that the arms control process so far, as successful as it has been over the last five years, really just cut out the Cold War redundancy in the nuclear arsenals on either side. . . .
But there is much, much more that I think we can do. We can, for example, agree toward a path that will be attached to a timetable. We can split the disarmament process into phases. What would a first phase in a process toward disarmament look like? What would the second phase look like? How many weapons would you need for security reasons in the ultimate phase? How low can you, in fact, go? . . .
After the Cold War, we need to think differently about security before we perpetuate Cold War thinking about the utility of nuclear weapons. . . .
Daniels: I agree with you, and I think we've started that. I think START I was phase one and START II is phase two. If we meet START I and START II, if you check, you'll see that we're already taxing our capability to take and dismantle these weapons. . . . And we have to keep -
Regina Karp: Then take the warheads off the missiles. And when you've rendered them inoperational -
Daniels: We've already started that by de-targeting. We took the bombers off alert. We de-targeted our SLBMs. We've de-targeted our ICBMs. . . .
What about a test ban treaty? How much of a key in this whole process is the adoption of a comprehensive treaty on banning nuclear testing?
Aaron Karp: The comprehensive nuclear test ban issue, CTB, is a funny one to watch because it's a real barometer of how politics has changed. For 20 years of NPT debates, the standard Third World demand was, get a comprehensive test ban and that will satisfy our demands for a more reciprocal arrangement on nuclear weapons. Now, of course, it's not nearly enough. You have to do much more than that. . . .
The big problem with the comprehensive test ban is, it doesn't prevent anyone from acquiring nuclear weapons. No one has botched their first nuclear test. No one's made a first bomb that didn't work. . . .
What about the nations that are not signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty? They are a major sticking point here. The big three holdouts over the past 25 years have been Israel, India and Pakistan. They all are now capable of using nuclear weapons. How do you deal with that?
Regina Karp: . . . The problem is that none of those three countries is interested in joining the NPT. They feel that they have worked out, particularly India and Pakistan, a system of deterrence very much like that one that was operational between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And they feel fairly safe with it. We, as onlookers, see problems, particularly with nuclear management. . . .
The problem is, what can you do about them? And should you do something? .
Aaron Karp: No treaty is a panacea.
Regina Karp: Yes, that's right.
Aaron Karp: You're not going to get anyone to sign every treaty. What you're going to do instead, I think, is be content with what you've got. Don't expect everyone to join. And if countries have real problems with it, let them craft their own agreements.
Look what Argentina and Brazil have done. Argentina and Brazil for years were not going to have anything to do with anything in the way of reining in their nuclear programs - these were far too important for anything like international treaties. And, good gracious, here they've created a regime that is probably one of the most impressive anywhere in the developing world. And they did it by themselves.
Now you can solve the India-Pakistan problem, but probably they have to solve it themselves. . . . Sometimes you've got to realize you're dealing with adults out there. They'll solve their own problems. You can hope. You can make it as easy as possible. But we don't have to pretend that we have to be everyone's nanny.
Schy: I think Argentina and Brazil got rid of their nuclear weapons because they realized that it was a disaster to develop nuclear weapons. There's just no point to it. The other things, going into Iraq and worrying about North Korea, I think, are completely side issues that can get us all excited. My God, Congress gets so excited about North Korea might, might, might have a nuclear weapon, you know? And they don't get excited - they're not going to talk about China, because we have very strong economic interests in China and we don't want to get too tough with China. But China's the real problem there.
Aaron Karp: I think that's too cynical to believe.
Schy: Really? (laughter)
Aaron Karp: Of course not. The point is, North Korea's regime, we don't trust. We don't trust the Chinese very much, but we certainly don't trust the North Koreans.
Schy: Professor Karp, I agree with you. I don't trust them because they are unstable. We don't know what they're going to do. But the question I have is very simple. What are they going to do with one or two nuclear weapons or three or four? What are they going to do with them?
Aaron Karp: They make it impossible for the United States to help defend the South. Look at Desert Storm. Do you think if Saddam Hussein had had one nuclear weapon, the Saudi Arabians would have let the Americans come in and fight a war against Iraq based on Saudi territory? They would have had a very impolite response to our attempts.
Schy: Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Why didn't they use them with the Scuds on Israel?
Aaron Karp: Technical reasons. They tried. The United Nations recovered about 40 warheads, but they never tested -
Schy: I believe that as long as Israel has nuclear weapons, they're not going to attack them with chemical and biological weapons. The same thing is true with North Korea. As long as the United States has numerous nuclear weapons in the area of South Korea, I cannot see North Korea attacking South Korea with a few nuclear weapons.
Aaron Karp: Are you saying then that we have to keep nuclear weapons in order to prevent proliferation?
Schy: No. I'm saying that these are important problems, but they're very secondary compared to the real problem. . . .
Regina Karp: Well, I don't think many of these problems are as unimportant as you make it out. I think what you are getting at is this need for very flexible leadership and flexible diplomacy. And what might work in one case may not work in another case. . . .
You made the point earlier that the NPT is not a panacea, and neither is the comprehensive test ban. In fact, all of those treaties that are out there right now, taken as a group, are not a panacea. The underlying objective here is ultimate disarmament. Does the U.S. have the political will to achieve that, or to work in that direction? And how optimistic or pessimistic are you about the chances of reaching that ultimate goal?
Regina Karp: . . . The problem with nuclear weapons is that they cannot be un-invented. Nuclear knowledge is out there, so it's not a matter of either putting the genie back into the bottle or killing all the nuclear physicists. I think these are the kinds of options that we do not want to pursue.
But what can we do instead? . . . You can, first of all, make very rigorous, very disciplined efforts to go beyond the limits that we have already agreed to in the START II negotiations. We will have, by the end of the century, the United States and its 3,500 nuclear weapons, and the Russians will have the same number. There is no reason that these numbers should stay at that level. You can go much, much lower down. There are debates about going down to dozens of nuclear weapons. There are debates about sticking at around 200. . . .
So you can continue with the traditional arms control process. At the same time, though, I think we can do diplomatic things. We can build regimes that support the kind of political processes that work internationally which delegitimize the existence of nuclear weapons. . . .
Way down the road . . . you then can perhaps take the ultimate step of eliminating nuclear weapons. . . .
Schy: . . . I feel that it must be made a major question in the political arena. Otherwise we'll never get to where we want to go . . .
Now, I worked for the government for 37 years. I know a little about bureaucrats. I was in the Army for three years in World War II. Once a bureaucrat gets going and once that bureaucracy builds up, God help you if you're going to try to dismantle it. . . . We've got to recognize that this was a strange anomaly that just grew like Topsy, and now we've got to get rid of it.
Daniels: I think I'm very optimistic that we will move toward disarmament. I think we'll do it very cautiously. . . .
I also think we need to branch out away from nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons aren't the only weapon of mass destruction. They're not the only weapon that kills indiscriminately and covers large areas. I think you've got to worry about the chemical and the biological. . . .
I think we need to keep that in the back of our minds - that all will not be well just because the nuclear stockpile has been eliminated. And I'm very optimistic we will eliminate it eventually.
Aaron Karp: I'm very pessimistic about the possibilities for nuclear disarmament. I think that we're going to find that maybe we can get down to about 500 American warheads, 500 Russian. Then you hit a big hump. For a variety of political and technological reasons, pushing below that may be very well impossible. . . .
Instead, I don't think you should even try. I think, move down as low as you can, but in a way, it doesn't matter. I mean, as we pointed out, there's still over 35,000 warheads around. I don't go to sleep worrying about this anymore. Maybe once I did. I don't anymore. Because the political situation's different. It's not essential to move those warhead levels down so much. What is important is to deal with the critical problems. . . .
Number one, you have to make sure that none of those warheads can get stolen by anyone, any terrorist or anyone else who might want to get a hold of them. . . .
Secondly, you have to concentrate on the particular countries who you don't trust. We don't really care how many warheads France or Britain has. We do care how many Iran or North Korea has. Those are the problems to concentrate on.
You should do what's possible. Maybe you can end nuclear testing, maybe you can end production of nuclear fissile material. You can improve the NPT. But I don't think that we should confuse security with big, bold, brassy international agreements and treaties and beautiful red paper.
Let's concentrate much more on the hard work, which may not be very political work. . . . I'm amazed at the START II treaty, which came into being almost overnight, worked by a bunch of anonymous bureaucrats. This treaty just sort of appeared out of nowhere.
That's the way you want to have it. Quiet diplomacy, moving in the right direction - doing the little jobs that need doing and not worrying too much about the huge ones that aren't that necessary. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Lt. Col. Tony Daniels, an Air Force specialist in nuclear
deterrence, is on the faculty at the Armed Forces Staff College in
Norfolk. He served on the staff of the U.S. Strategic Command, where
he was involved in nuclear war planning.
Aaron Karp is an adjunct professor of international studies and
political science at Old Dominion University. He is a specialist in
the political and military processes at work in the spread of
weapons technology.
Regina Cowen Karp is an associate professor in the graduate
program in international studies at Old Dominion University. She has
published books on international security and the future of nuclear
weapons. The Karps are married.
Al Schy, a retired aerospace scientist with an educational
background in nuclear physics, worked at NASA Langley Research
Center in Hampton. He is a member of the Peninsula Peace Education
Center.
Graphics
THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY
In many ways, it has been the most successful arms control effort
in history. What it did:
Nations that had no nuclear weapons when the pact took effect in
1970 agreed not to acquire them, and to submit to international
inspections to assure compliance.
Nuclear nations agreed to make nuclear technology available to
nonnuclear nations for peaceful applications on a nondiscriminatory
basis.
All signers agreed to pursue good-faith measures toward complete
worldwide nuclear disarmament.
When the pact was adopted, only five nations - the United States,
the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China - had nuclear arms.
There have been no acknowledged additions to the nuclear club,
although Israel, India and Pakistan - none of which signed the
treaty - are widely thought to have established clandestine
arsenals. A few other countries, including Iran and North Korea, are
believed to be trying to develop nuclear arms.
More than 80 countries have indicated they will vote for
permanent renewal of the treaty during a conference beginning Monday
at the United Nations. It will require 87 votes, a majority of the
173 participating countries, to prevent the treaty from expiring
this year.
ON LINE
A full text of the discussion is available on the Local News page
of Pilot Online at the Internet address http://www.infi.net/pilot/
THE NUCLEAR ARMS ERA
[Timeline]
ROBERT D. VOROS/Staff
SOURCES: CQ Researcher, World Book Encyclopedia
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB