- In a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, between
9 million and 12 million people would die and another 2 to 7 million would
be injured. Unknown millions more would die of starvation, disease and
radiation. Most of the bombs would explode on the ground, spreading radioactive
debris over large areas and destroying agriculture for years. The contamination
would spread far beyond India and Pakistan.
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- Even a limited nuclear exchange would have cataclysmic
results, overwhelming hospitals across Asia and the Middle East and requiring
vast foreign assistance, particularly from the United Sates, which would
be forced to contend with the radioactive mess.
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- Thus reads the summary of a U.S. intelligence report
published last week. The scope of the tragedy defies human comprehension.
Yet the plausibility of such a nuclear exchange was likely enough to be
placed on the front page of The New York Times.
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- We live at a dangerous moment in world history, a time
when human knowledge has vaulted to the point of wiping out vast swaths
of human population but human wisdom only tiptoes forward against the tide.
Meanwhile, both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India and Gen. Pervez
Musharraf of Pakistan, neither man known for imagination or statesmanship,
have irresponsibly escalated the threats of war.
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- Coincidentally, just as the frightening possibility of
a nuclear exchange was growing, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir
V. Putin signed a treaty in Moscow billed as an arms-control breakthrough.
Were it only true! In fact, the treaty is not a breakthrough and places
no new constraints on the forces spinning us forward into further madness
and potentially unimaginable destruction.
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- The accord reveals a startling lack of understanding
of the real dangers we face.
-
- Consider that the agreement limits only the numbers of
long-range nuclear warheads that are deployed, or ready for use, by both
sides by 2012. It allows Russia and the United States to store as many
warheads as they want. It does not require either to destroy bombers, missiles
and submarines removed from nuclear service, and, instead, it permits both
nations to re-arm those systems with stored warheads by withdrawing from
the treaty with a three-month notice.
-
- Both sides also remain free to keep thousands of short-range
nuclear arms, such as artillery shells, and to modernize their nuclear
arsenals. Finally, neither side will have to meet the proposed ceiling
of 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads, a two-thirds reduction, until the
last day of the treaty at the end of 2012.
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- The Bush-Putin treaty represents a profound shift in
four decades of U.S-Russian arms-control efforts. During the Cold War,
Moscow and Washington spent years negotiating complex accords designed
to lower the risks of a nuclear holocaust by setting precise limits on
each other's nuclear forces. To reach those limits, both nations committed
themselves to destroy missiles, submarines and bombers. The process has
now stopped.
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- Bush insists that the new deal "will liquidate the
legacy of the Cold War" by overcoming lingering U.S.-Russian mistrust
and accelerating Russia's integration into Western political, economic
and security arrangements. Arms-control advocates contend that the treaty
will perpetuate the U.S.-Russian nuclear rivalry and keep the door open
to further nuclear proliferation. By permitting Russia and the United States
to maintain large nuclear forces, the treaty does nothing to dissuade countries
such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea from trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
-
- Meanwhile, the Bush administration is taking significant
steps toward resuming the development of new nuclear weapons as part of
a multibillion-dollar drive to upgrade the country's aging nuclear weapons
production facilities and research laboratories.
-
- A recent leak of a top-secret 2001 Pentagon review of
U.S. nuclear policy also revealed plans for a new U.S. intercontinental
ballistic missile, missile-firing submarine and nuclear-capable bomber.
U.S. officials believe that Russia's nuclear plans include fitting three
warheads on its new intercontinental ballistic missile, known as the SS-27
or Topal M. The missile, of which about 30 have been deployed, carries
one warhead.
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- If this is peace preparation, what then is war?
-
- War is madness. And wars are spawned by our collective
inability to comprehend real dangers and our inability to imagine new paths
toward lasting peace.
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- http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/060702/060702s.htm
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