- It was 1.22am last Monday on the frozen Alaskan island
of Kodiak when the missile flared upwards into the night sky. As the rocket's
flames disappeared into darkness, United States military chiefs waited
with baited breath to see if their multibillion dollar 'Son of Star Wars'
defence shield would work.
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- Thousands of miles away on the Pacific island of Kwajalein
another missile was primed to intercept the Alaskan launch, soaring to
destroy its target in the upper atmosphere and thus 'save America from
nuclear devastation'. It never made it. The test failed.
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- On Kwajalein metal supports holding the interceptor rocket
failed to disengage. If it had been real the enemy nuke would have hit
its target. The system has now failed in six out of nine tests. Many experts
believe it simply does not work.
-
- But this does not deter the Pentagon. It is in a frenzy
to put a missile shield around America. The threat from nuclear attack
is now once more at the centre of strategic planning. The missile defence
shield is not seen as a throwback but as a vital part of defence. Nuclear
weapons too remain in US plans, it is now looking at developing a whole
new range of 'bunker buster' nukes.
-
- A new nuclear arms race is gripping the world. Many experts
believe the likelihood of such an attack is greater now than it was during
the Cold War. North Korea has already claimed it has nuclear weapons, Iran
could be on the brink of building them. Both nations could trigger arms
races among their neighbours. The international system set up to stop the
proliferation of nuclear weapons has sprung a series of leaks. UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan has warned of a 'cascade' of states going nuclear.
-
- But that might not even be the biggest threat. Behind
the ambitions and fears of nations lurk terrorist networks bent on acquiring
weapons. Few doubt the most extreme groups would love to use them. It is
a bleak picture that makes the Cold War look almost safe. 'We are in an
extremely dangerous time right now,' said Natalie Goldring, a proliferation
expert at the University of Maryland.
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- At the moment the world's nuclear club is eight strong.
There are the original big five of the US, China, Russia, Britain and France
and three newcomers of India, Pakistan and Israel. That has now changed.
If the pronouncements coming out of Pyongyang are to be believed, the reclusive
and impoverished Stalinist state of North Korea has now become the club's
newest member.
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- Some disbelieve the official rhetoric. North Korea is
desperate for foreign aid and wants face-to-face talks with America. It
is possible that this latest move is just a bluff. 'I would not take anything
the North Koreans say at face value,' said Paul Leventhal, president of
the Nuclear Control Institute.
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- But most experts accept such sentiments afford little
comfort. Now the focus of dealing with North Korea has become working out
what sort of nuclear devices North Korea might possess and how it could
deliver them. Though it has no missiles that could reach America, South
Korea lies just over the border. Tokyo is just a short flight over the
Sea of Japan. It could easily use a plane or a boat to deliver a nuclear
device.
-
- That could see the triggering of a regional nuclear arms
race in Asia, a continent already scarred by the nuclear standoff between
Indian and Pakistan. With North Korea boasting a nuclear arsenal, South
Korea is under enormous pressure to follow suit as a deterrent. Japan too
could see nuclear weapons as its only insurance against assault. With its
hi-tech economy many people believe Japan could develop weapons in a matter
of weeks or months, not years.
-
- But if this happens then China, motivated by longstanding
fears over its advanced neighbour, will likely move to increase its own
nuclear weapons arsenal and develop more advanced delivery systems. Suddenly,
the nuclear club will start to look very crowded.
-
- Certainly Iran appears to want to join despite intensive
diplomacy from a trio of European nations. Many experts put that down to
a failure of US policy. Iran's leaders have looked at the contrasting fates
of Iraq, which was invaded for weapons it did not have, and North Korea,
which has confessed to developing nuclear weapons and now appears immune
to any military threat. With the Bush administration openly bent on 'regime
change' in Iran, the safest route for the country's reigning mullahs seems
obvious. 'Iran has learned that lesson. They want to go the North Korea
route, not the Iraq route,' Goldring said.
-
- That has led to a dangerous game of brinkmanship in a
Middle East destined to become a theatre of conflict where nuclear weapons
are suddenly a real possibility. Israel already has the bomb. Iran, surrounded
by American allies and soldiers, wants it too. Some experts think it is
too late to stop Iran from going nuclear, no matter how many official denials
Tehran puts out about its intentions. Others believe there is still hope.
'We need to make a concerted effort and engage with the process,' said
Peter Pella, a former proliferation expert at the US State Department.
-
- The Bush administration is taking an opposite tack. In
an international version of 'good cop, bad cop' European nations are holding
discussions with Iran about its nuclear programme, while the US makes hostile
noises. Few experts failed to notice Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
recent remarks that attacking Iran was '...not on the agenda at this point'.
That has some US hawks on the Iranian situation delighted. 'We need a stick
to use,' said Leventhal. 'The Europeans will have heard the 'not on the
agenda' part, but the Iranians will have head the 'at this point' part.'
-
- Whatever the approach, few believe that the Iranian nuclear
issue is anything but a potentially catastrophic powder keg. If Iran pushes
ahead, then Israel could launch strikes against possible nuclear facilities,
just as it did in Iraq in the 1980s. Such a move could easily ignite a
major war across the region. The crisis is brewing to a boil and no real
solution is yet in sight.
-
- But the nuclear threat of the 21st century comes from
terrorist groups, not just rogue states. It is no longer governments who
are the most likely to spread nukes or the technology to make them. And
it is no longer states who are most likely to use them.
-
- Militants such as Osama bin Laden have said that they
would use nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda are known to have acquired plans for
the manufacture of nuclear arms. Intelligence services know meetings occurred
between al-Qaeda representatives and nuclear scientists before 11 September.
Islamic militants have since negotiated to buy what they thought was weapons-grade
uranium from criminals.
-
- 'The intent is there,' said one Western intelligence
source. 'The question is whether any militant organisation - particularly
one that is being chased by the most powerful nation in the world - could
build the facilities to create and weaponise a nuclear armament, even some
kind of "suitcase bomb" style device. The answer is "probably
no".'
-
- Instead, most experts agree, the main threat comes from
a basic radiological device - or dirty bomb. This would be a conventional
bomb laced with radioactive material - perhaps only an element from a hospital
x-ray machine.
-
- According to a report to be published next week by the
British American Security Information Council, the radiological impact
of a dirty bomb is uncertain. In 1987 the Iraqi army tested a large radiological
bomb for possible use in the Iran-Iraq war, but abandoned the plan because
the radiation levels produced were not considered high enough. But dirty
bombs do have two advantages for terrorists. First, they could cause widespread
panic and chaos. Second, the cost of the cleanup, and the implications
of having large parts of a city centre rendered unusable, would be massive.
-
- There are also fears that North Korea or Iran may give
nuclear technology to militants, or rogue scientists selling secrets or
nuclear materials. A recent example is that of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father
of Pakistan's nuclear programme, who reportedly made himself a fortune
of more than $400m in a 15 year career of selling nuclear secrets to North
Korea, Libya and, quite possibly, Iran.
-
- Working through scores of offshore accounts and cut-out
companies, Khan's network stretched from South Africa to Morocco to Singapore.
Turkish and Malaysian workshops made parts for centrifuges, Italian factories
made furnaces, a German supplier provided vacuum pumps. Though the CIA
have claimed they had penetrated the network, it is still thought Khan
was able to visit North Korea more than a dozen times to swap Pakistani
centrifuge technology for local missile know-how, pass uranium enrichment
technology to Iran and to give Libya blue prints for a bomb.
-
- There are dangers everywhere. Many fear General Pervaiz
Musharraf's pro-Western government in Pakistan, which already has the bomb,
could be replaced by a harder line Islamic regime. And there are problems
with former Soviet stocks. Russia alone has hundreds of metric tonnes of
weapons grade materials such as enriched uranium. The prospect of a nuclear
attack by terrorists on a Western city is more possible now than at any
time. 'If a nuclear weapon went off in a city somewhere, it would not surprise
me at all,' said Leventhal.
-
- It is not all doom and gloom. Libya has come in from
the diplomatic cold, giving up its nuclear ambitions. And there is now
little possibility of a nuclear-armed Iraq threatening the Middle East.
-
- But in general the situation looks bleak. It has been
more than 30 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was created.
It was designed to discourage nations from developing nuclear weapons in
return for access to nuclear power and an obligation on behalf of the big
powers to work towards nuclear disarmament.
-
- The treaty will be reviewed this May in New York at a
time when it seems no one is abiding by it. It is likely that the issue
of Iran will dominate the meeting. One senior Western European diplomat
told The Observer the atmosphere was likely to be 'poisoned' by the acrimonious
debate over policy towards Tehran.
-
- 'It is a treaty concerned not only with stopping the
further spread of nukes but also about their complete elimination,' said
Dr Stephen Pullinger, of Saferworld, an independent foreign affairs think
tank. 'Instead, it is clear that none of the five declared nuclear states
are thinking about abandoning their nukes for the foreseeable future.'
As Iran and North Korea stand in the dock in May it may well be worth remembering
the Non-Proliferation was meant to work both ways.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1418527,00.html
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