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  • The Domino Effect: Preemptive Wars on the Rise

    When the Bush administration initiated the invasion of Iraq arguing that preemptive war was a justifiable action, the Pandora’s Box was opened. Russia has just announced that its armed forces will conduct preemptive strikes against terrorist bases in “any region of the world.” How will the UN or NATO or any government dispute the argument of the right that Russia or any other nations would have to defend its security after the actions of the United States?

    Russia has not demonstrated accuracy or capability in dealing with previous terrorist attacks in its country. For example, there was a terrible massacre in the Moscow Theater on October 23, 2002. 129 hostages perished mostly due to the use of narcotic gas that the Russian Special Forces used to subdue the Chechen attackers. This shows incompetence in trying to solve such critical situations. Many mistakes were committed during the siege of the school in Beslan, in North Osetia bordering Chechnya . At the same time, what is happening in Iraq – anarchy, terror and chaos – demonstrates that the Bush administration is incapable of re-establishing peace and order in the afflicted Arab nation. The casualties of American soldiers continue to mount as well as innocent Iraqi citizens.

    How will the world accept any preemptive attack when this action depends on the information from “intelligence” sources like that which was collected by the American and British intelligence prior to the war in Iraq ? The flaws, mistakes and misinformation are not in the open.

    If Putin’s administration is not just trying to intimidate the Chechen separatists by launching preemptive attacks with the excuse of defending Russia , then very soon we could expect similar events from any nation with military power to try to vindicate past or present feuds with the terrible results that such actions will cause. More than one can play this game.

    *Ruben Arvizu is Director for Latin America of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Great Olympic Moment

    A Great Olympic Moment

    The Olympics are always magnificent. They bring the world together. The competition of the talented young athletes demonstrates the power, speed, precision and grace of human achievement and, most of all, the beauty of the human spirit. We are reminded that we are one world, and we are capable of coming together to compete peacefully.

    In the Athens Olympics, there was a striking moment that demonstrated the power of the people. It occurred during the men’s gymnastic competition. The great Russian Olympian, Alexi Nemov was performing in the individual competition on the high bar. He performed a magnificent routine, releasing from the bar and flying over it four or five times. When he landed at the end of his routine the excitement in the room was palpable. There was a tremendous ovation.

    Then the judges’ scores came up. They were lower than the crowd in the arena thought was fair, and the people rose to their feet and jeered the scores. Many attempts were made to quiet the crowd in order for the next athlete to compete, but the people would not be silenced. They clearly believed that they had witnessed an injustice, and they were not willing to be silent in the face of this injustice.

    At this point one of the senior officials walked to the judges’ platform and spoke with two judges who had given particularly low scores. Then the scores were adjusted upward and new scores posted in the arena. But the crowd was still not fully satisfied as the scores remained below the crowd’s level of expectation for Nemov’s brilliant performance. The people continued to express their dissatisfaction.

    Then, Nemov stepped out and faced the crowd. With great humility, he gestured to the crowd to stop their protest and they responded. The arena finally quieted enough for the competition to continue.

    Why was this a great moment? Because the people spontaneously arose to protest a perceived injustice. Because the multinational crowd in the arena stood in solidarity with an athlete who they thought had been treated unfairly. Because the people in the arena that day demonstrated that their power was not to be denied. Because they showed the world that they would not be cowed by authorities, in this case the judges, from their own understanding of what is just and fair.

    If only we could learn from this great Olympic moment. People matter. Fairness matters. And there are times when it is necessary for people to raise their voices against those in power if individuals are to be protected and fairness is to be upheld.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Nuclear Policy of the Bush Administration

    The euphoria in the West that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union had an amazing effect. The general public came to believe that the end of the Cold War also meant the end of the nuclear peril, and that the nuclear issue can be taken off the agenda of important problems.

    This is seen in a public opinion poll in the UK, in which the question was: what is the most important issue facing Britain. During the Cold War, more than 40 per cent put nuclear weapons as such an issue. Since the end of it, the percentage dropped rapidly, and nowadays it is practically zero. The situation is probably the same in the United States, and it is my opinion that this enabled the hawks to become bolder in their plans, not only to ensure, but to demonstrate to the rest of the world, the overwhelming superiority of the United States. The events of September 11th came as a convenient excuse to put these plans into action.

    The year 2002 was remarkable for the formulation of new policies, starting with the Nuclear Posture Review in January, and ending with the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, released in December.

    This last document starts with: ‘Weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, biological, and chemical – in the possession of hostile states and terrorists represent one of the greatest security challenges facing the United States.’

    And this is the crux of the matter. According to the current counter-proliferation policy, nuclear weapons are bad, but only if in possession of some states or groups. In the possession of the United States they are good, and must be kept for the sake of world security.

    The fact that as a signatory of the NPT, the USA is legally bound to their elimination, is completely ignored. Indeed, nuclear arsenals will have to be retained indefinitely, not just as a weapon of last resort, or as a deterrent against a nuclear attack, but as an ordinary tool in the military armoury, to be used in the resolution of conflicts, as has been practiced in the past, and even in pre-emptive strikes, should political contingencies demand it.

    This is in essence the current US nuclear policy, and I see it as a very dangerous policy.

    Towards its implementation, President Bush has already authorized the development of a new nuclear warhead of low yield, but with a shape that would give it a very high penetrating power into concrete, a ‘bunker-busting mini-nuke’, as it has been named. It is intended to destroy bunkers with thick concrete walls in which public enemies, like Saddam Hussein, may seek shelter.

    To give the military authorities confidence in the performance of the new weapon it will have to be tested.

    If the USA resumed testing, this would be a signal to other nuclear weapon states to do the same. China is almost certain to resume testing. After the US decision to develop ballistic missile defences, China feels vulnerable, and is likely to attempt to reduce its vulnerability by a modernization and build-up of its nuclear arsenal. Other states with nuclear weapons, such as India or Pakistan, may use the window of opportunity opened by the USA to update their arsenals. The danger of a new nuclear arms race is real.

    As mentioned before, the new policy includes pre-emptive acts, and this greatly increases the danger. If the militarily mightiest country declares its readiness to carry out a pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons, others may soon follow. The Kashmir crisis, of May last year, is a stark warning of the reality of the nuclear peril.

    India’s declared policy is not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. But if the United States – whose nuclear policies are largely followed by India – makes pre-emptive nuclear attacks part of its doctrine, this would give India the legitimacy to carry out a pre- emptive strike against Pakistan. Even more likely is that Pakistan would carry this out first.

    Taiwan presents another potential cause for a pre- emptive nuclear strike by the United States. Should the Taiwan authorities decide to declare independence, this would inevitably result in an attempted military invasion by mainland China. The USA, which is committed to the defence of the integrity of Taiwan, may then opt for a pre-emptive strike.

    Finally, we have the problem of North Korea, listed by Bush as one of the ‘axis of evil.’ The disclosure that North Korea is already in possession of two nuclear warheads, and the likelihood of its acquiring more of them if the Yongbyon facility is reactivated, are a direct challenge to current US policy. I fear that a campaign to use military force against the regime of Kim Jong Il, similar to that against Saddam Hussein, will ensue.

    How can we prevent such catastrophes? The traditional method of dealing with such situations – by partial agreements, damage-limitation treaties, confidence- building measures – does not seem to work any more. In its determination to maintain world dominance, particularly on the nuclear issue, the present administration will pay no attention to reasoned and sophisticated arguments. Arms control is as good as dead.

    As I see it, the only way is to go back to basics, to put the goal of total nuclear disarmament back on the agenda. The only way to compel the current decision- makers to change their minds is by pressure of public opinion. For this purpose, the public must be awakened to the danger. The general public is not sufficiently informed about the recent changes in military doctrine, and the perils arising from them. We have to convince the public that the continuation of current policies, in which security of the world is maintained by the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons, is not realistic in the long run because it is bound eventually to result in a nuclear holocaust in which the future of the human race would be at stake. We must convince public opinion that the only alternative is the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Sir Joseph Rotblat, the 1995 Nobel Peace Laureate, is an member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council.

  • … Unless It’s All Greek to Him

    During a lull in the war between Athens and Sparta , the Athenians decided to invade and occupy Sicily . Thucydides tells us in “The Peloponnesian War” that “they were, for the most part, ignorant of the size of the island and the numbers of its inhabitants . and they did not realize that they were taking on a war of almost the same magnitude as their war against the Peloponnesians.”

    According to Thucydides, the digression into Sicily in 416 BC – a sideshow that involved lying exiles, hopeful contractors, politicized intelligence, a doctrine of preemption – ultimately cost Athens everything, including its democracy.

    Nicias, the most experienced Athenian general, had not wanted to be chosen for the command. “His view was that the city was making a mistake and, on a slight pretext which looked reasonable, was in fact aiming at conquering the whole of Sicily – a considerable undertaking indeed,” wrote Thucydides.

    Nicias warned that it was the wrong war against the wrong enemy and that the Athenians were ignoring their real enemies – the Spartans – while creating new enemies elsewhere. “It is senseless to go against people who, even if conquered, could not be controlled,” he argued.

    Occupying Sicily would require many soldiers, Nicias insisted, because it meant establishing a new government among enemies. “Those who do this [must] either become masters of the country on the very first day they land in it, or be prepared to recognize that, if they fail to do so, they will find hostility on every side.”

    The case for war, meanwhile, was made by the young general Alcibiades, who was hoping for a quick victory in Sicily so he could move on to conquer Carthage . Alcibiades, who’d led a dissolute youth (and who happened to own a horse ranch, raising Olympic racers) was a battle-tested soldier, a brilliant diplomat and a good speaker. (So much for superficial similarities.)

    Alcibiades intended to rely on dazzling technology – the Athenian armada – instead of traditional foot soldiers. He told the Assembly he wasn’t worried about Sicilian resistance because the island’s cities were filled with people of so many different groups. “Such a crowd as this is scarcely likely either to pay attention to one consistent policy or to join together in concerted action.. The chances are that they will make separate agreements with us as soon as we come forward with attractive suggestions.”

    Another argument for the war was that it would pay for itself. A committee of Sicilian exiles and Athenian experts told the Assembly that there was enough wealth in Sicily to pay the costs of the war and occupation. “The report was encouraging but untrue,” wrote Thucydides.

    Though war was constant in ancient Greece , it was still usually justified by a threat, an insult or an incident. But the excursion against Sicily was different, and Alcibiades announced a new, or at least normally unstated, doctrine.

    “One does not only defend oneself against a superior power when one is attacked: One takes measures in advance to prevent the attack materializing,” he said.

    When and where should this preemption doctrine be applied? Alcibiades gave an answer of a sort. “It is not possible for us to calculate, like housekeepers [perhaps a better translation would be “girlie men”], exactly how much empire we want to have. The fact is that we have reached a state where we are forced to plan new conquests and forced to hold on to what we have got because there is danger that we ourselves may fall under the power of others unless others are in our power.”

    Alcibiades’ argument carried the day, but before the invasion, the Athenian fleet sailed around seeking allies among the Hellenic colonies near Sicily . Despite the expedition’s “great preponderance of strength over those against whom it set out,” only a couple of cities joined the coalition.

    At home, few spoke out against the Sicilian operation. “There was a passion for the enterprise which affected everyone alike,” Thucydides reports. “The result of this excessive enthusiasm of the majority was that the few who actually were opposed to the expedition were afraid of being thought unpatriotic if they voted against it, and therefore kept quiet.”

    In the face of aggressive posturing, Nicias appealed to the Assembly members to show true courage.

    “If any of you is sitting next to one of [Alcibiades’] supporters,” Nicias said, “do not allow yourself to be browbeaten or to be frightened of being called a coward if you do not vote for war.. Our country is on the verge of the greatest danger she has ever known. Think of her, hold up your hands against this proposal and vote in favor of leaving the Sicilians alone.”

    We don’t know how many Athenians had secret reservations, but few hands went up against the war.

    In the end, the Athenians lost everything in Sicily . Their army was defeated and their navy destroyed. Alcibiades was recalled early on; Nicias was formally executed while thousands of Athenian prisoners were left in an open pit, where most died.

    The Sicilians didn’t follow up by invading Attica; they just wanted Athens out. But with the leader of the democracies crippled, allies left the Athenian League. Then the real enemy, Sparta , ever patient and cautious, closed in over the next few years. But not before Athens descended, on its own, into a morass of oligarchic coups and self-imposed tyranny.

    Originally published by the Los Angeles Times

  • Israel’s Nukes Serve to Justify Iran’s: Deterring the Deterrents

    The more nuclear arms are lying around, the more the chances of them being used. So to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons is a laudable objective. But for the United States, Britain and France to insist on it is hypocritical.

    These Western powers have argued convincingly for decades that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace – and themselves maintain nuclear armories long after the cold war has ended. So why shouldn’t Iran , which is in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, have a deterrent too?

    And where is the source of the threat that makes Iran, a country that has never started a war in 200 years, feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road? If Saddam Hussein’s Iraq , with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel, the country that hard-liners in the United States are encouraging to mount a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear industry before it produces bombs.

    The United States refuses to acknowledge formally that Israel has nuclear weapons, even though top officials will tell you privately that it has 200 of them. Until this issue is openly acknowledged, America, Britain and France are probably wasting their time trying to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons.

    The supposition is that Israel lives in an even more dangerous neighborhood than Iran. It is said to be a beleaguered nation under constant threat of being eliminated by the combined muscle of its Arab opponents.

    There is no evidence, however, that Arab states have invested the financial and human resources necessary to fight the kind of war that would be catastrophic for Israel. And there is no evidence that Israel’s nuclear weapons have deterred the Arabs from more limited wars or prevented Palestinian intifadas and suicide bombers.

    Nor have Israel ‘s nuclear weapons influenced Arab attitudes toward making peace. In the 1973 Arab war against Israel and in the 1991 Gulf war, they clearly failed in their supposed deterrent effect. The Arabs knew, as the North Vietnamese knew during the Vietnam War, that their opponent would not dare to use its nuclear weapons.

    Israelis say that they need nuclear weapons in case one day an opportunistic Egypt and Syria, sensing that Israel ‘s guard is down, revert to their old stance of total hostility and attack Israel. But, as Zeev Maoz has argued in the journal International Security, these countries keep to their treaty obligations.

    Egypt did not violate its peace treaty with Israel when Israel attacked Syria and Lebanon in 1982. Syria did not violate the May 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel even when its forces were under Israeli attack. Nor did Egypt, Jordan and Syria violate their treaty commitments when the second Palestinian intifada broke out in September 2000.

    Since its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has reduced its defense spending from 22 percent of its gross national product in 1974 to a mere 2.75 percent in 2002. Syria ‘s has fallen from 26 percent to 6.7 percent. The combined defense expenditures of Egypt , Syria , Jordan and Lebanon amount to only 58 percent of Israel ‘s. It is the Arabs who should be worried by Israel ‘s might, rather than the other way round.

    Israel ‘s nuclear weapons are politically unusable and militarily irrelevant, given the real threats it faces. But they have been very effective in allowing India, Pakistan, Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, North Korea and now Iran to think that they, too, had good reason to build a nuclear deterrent.

    Four of these nations have dismantled their nuclear arms factories, which shows that nuclear policies are not cast in stone. The way to deal with Iran is to prove to its leadership that nuclear weapons will add nothing to its security, just as they add nothing to Israel ‘s.

    This may require a grand bargain, which would mean the United States offering a mutual nonaggression pact, ending its embargo over access to the International Monetary Fund and allowing American investment in Iran . It would also mean America coming clean about Israel ‘s nuclear armory and pressuring Israel to forgo its nuclear deterrent.

    If Western powers want to grasp the nettle of nuclear proliferation, they need to take hold of the whole plant, not just one leaf.

    Jonathan Power is a commentator on foreign affairs.

    Originally published by the International Herald Tribune.

  • The Wrong Deterrence: The Threat of Loose Nukes Is One of Our Own Making

    Nuclear terrorism, thankfully, is still only a specter, not a reality. But the recent wave of bloodshed in Russia underscores the urgency of the need to prevent terrorists capable of indiscriminate slaughter from acquiring nuclear bombs.

    To its credit, the Bush administration has finally launched an ambitious initiative to better secure nuclear and radiological materials, particularly in violence-racked Russia. But unless the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which was introduced in May, becomes part of a far more comprehensive approach to the challenges of nuclear theft and terrorism, it is destined to fall well short of its goal of safeguarding the American people from the threat of nuclear weapons.

    The initiative builds on the bilateral nonproliferation efforts of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a U.S. government-funded, post-Cold War effort that focused on securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The new, expanded cooperative effort seeks to collect weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium that could be used in nuclear bombs from dozens of additional countries, and to lock them down in secure facilities.

    But with U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces still on hair-trigger alert, we need to recognize that present policies for reducing the risk of nuclear strikes against the United States by terrorists or rogue countries are inconsistent and self-defeating. On the one hand, in the name of deterrence, U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces both comply with their presidents’ instructions to be constantly prepared to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other at a moment’s notice. On the other hand, in the name of nonproliferation, the United States and Russia cooperate closely in securing Russia’s nuclear weapons against theft.

    By keeping thousands of nuclear weapons poised for immediate launch, even under normal peacetime circumstances, the United States projects a powerful deterrent threat at Russia. But at the same time, it causes Russia to retain thousands of weapons in its operational inventory, scattered across that country’s vast territory, and to keep them ready for rapid use in large-scale nuclear war with America. And to maintain the reliability of these far-flung weapons, Russia must constantly transport large numbers back and forth between a remanufacturing facility and the dispersed military bases. This perpetual motion creates a serious vulnerability, because transportation is the Achilles’ heel of nuclear weapons security.

    On any given day, many hundreds of Russian nuclear weapons are moving around the countryside. Nearly 1,000 of them are in some stage of transit or temporary storage awaiting relocation at any time. This constant movement between the far-flung nuclear bases and the remanufacturing facility at Ozersk in the southern Urals stems from the esoteric technical fact that Russian nuclear bombs are highly perishable. In contrast to American bombs, which have a shelf life of more than 30 years, Russian bombs last only eight to 12 years before corrosion and internal decay render them unreliable — prone to fizzling instead of exploding. At that point, they must be shipped back to the factory for remanufacturing. Every year many hundreds of bombs, perhaps as many as a thousand, roll out of Russia’s Mayak factory. The United States turns out fewer than 10 per year. In Russia, the rail and other transportation lines linking the factory to the far-flung nuclear bases across 10 time zones are buzzing with nuclear activity and provide fertile ground for terrorist interception.

    Keeping a small strategic arsenal consolidated at a limited number of locations close to the Mayak factory would be the ideal security environment for preventing Russian nuclear bombs from falling into terrorist hands. But the ongoing nuclear dynamic between the former Cold War foes creates the opposite environment, which undercuts security. Russian nuclear commanders, confronted with U.S. submarines lurking off their coasts with 10-minute missile-flight times to Moscow and thousands of launch-ready U.S. warheads on land- and sea-based missiles aimed at thousands of targets in Russia, are compelled to match the American posture in numbers, alert status and geographic dispersal. U.S. leaders must decide which goal takes precedence: sustaining the Cold War legacy of massive arsenals to deter a massive surprise nuclear attack, or shoring up the security of Russian nuclear weapons to prevent terrorists from grabbing them (or corrupt guards from stealing and selling them).

    And terrorists grabbing such a weapon as it shuttles between deployment fields and factories is not the worst-case scenario stemming from this nuclear gamesmanship. The theft of a nuclear bomb could spell eventual disaster for an American city, but the seizure of a ready-to-fire strategic long-range nuclear missile or group of missiles capable of delivering bombs to targets thousands of miles away could be apocalyptic for entire nations.

    If scores of armed Chechen rebels were able to slip into the heart of Moscow and hold a packed theater hostage for days, as they did in 2002, might it not be possible for terrorists to infiltrate missile fields in rural Russia and seize control of a nuclear-armed mobile rocket roaming the countryside? It’s an open question that warrants candid bilateral discussion of the prospects of terrorists capturing rockets and circumventing the safeguards designed to foil their illicit firing, especially since the 9/11 commission report revealed that al Queda plotters considered this very idea.

    Another specter concerns terrorists “spoofing” radar or satellite sensors or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. By either firing short-range missiles that fool warning sensors into reporting an attack by longer-range missiles, or feeding false data into warning computer networks, could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in “retaliation?” False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are given, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and to decide whether to retaliate. Russia’s deteriorating early-warning network, coupled with terrorist plotting against it, only heightens the dangers.

    Russia is not the only crucible of risk. The early-warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute. As these nations move toward hair-trigger stances for their nuclear missiles, the terrorist threat to them will grow in parallel.

    Even the U.S. nuclear control apparatus is far from fool-proof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery — terrorist hackers might be able to gain back-door electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically of radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject certain types of firing orders that previously would have been carried out immediately.

    Both countries are running terrorist risks of this sort for the sake of an obsolete deterrent strategy. The notion that either the United States or Russia would deliberately attack the other with nuclear weapons is ludicrous, while the danger that terrorists are plotting to get their hands on these arsenals is real. We need to kick our old habits and stand down our hair-trigger forces. Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off of alert would automatically reduce, if not remove, the biggest terrorist threats that stem from keeping thousands of U.S. and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles fueled, targeted and waiting for a couple of computer signals to fire. They would fly the instant they received these signals, which can be sent with a few keystrokes on a launch console.

    To keep them from flying, we ought to reverse our priorities for nuclear security. The U.S. government should not be spending 25 times more on its deterrent posture than it spends on all of our nonproliferation assistance to Russia and other countries to help them keep their nuclear bombs and materials from falling into terrorist hands. Both the United States and Russia should be spending more on de-alerting, dismantling and securing our arsenals than on prepping them for a large-scale nuclear war with each other.

    The current deterrent practices of the two nuclear superpowers are not only anachronistic, they are thwarting our ability to protect ourselves against the real threats.

    Bruce Blair is president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information and a former Minuteman launch officer.

    This article first appeared in The Washington Post , September 19, 2004.

  • Lessons of Iraq War Underscore Importance of UN Charter – Annan

    Secretary-General Kofi Annan believes that the Iraq war in 2003 demonstrated the need for the international community to address the issue of preventive action in the context of Charter principles and showed the importance of joint efforts on matters of use of force, a United Nations spokesman said today.

    Responding to media questions about the Secretary-General’s comments in a BBC interview, spokesman Fred Eckhard told a press briefing in New York that in his remarks the Secretary-General had reiterated his well-known position that the military action against Iraq was not in conformity with the UN Charter.

    In the interview, Mr. Annan was repeatedly asked whether the war was “illegal.” “Yes,” he finally said, “I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.”

    The Secretary-General said the war in Iraq  and its aftermath had brought home painful lessons about the importance of resolving use-of-force issues jointly through the UN. “I think that in the end everybody is concluding that it is best to work together with allies and through the UN to deal with some of those issues.

    “And I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time,” the Secretary-General told the interviewer, noting that such action needed UN approval and a much broader support of the international community.

    Mr. Eckhard stressed that this had been the Secretary-General’s longstanding view. The spokesman added that one of the purposes of a High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which the Secretary-General had established, was to look at the issue of preventive war and to see how it could be employed in conformity with the Charter, which does not allow pre-emptive attacks.

    “He has over the past more than a year used the words ‘not in conformity with the Charter’ to describe his view of the Iraq war and of course one of his purposes in establishing the UN panel on change was to look at the question of preventive war and try to bring that in conformity with the Charter principles, which do not promote preventive war,” Mr. Eckhard said.

    “Since the war he has been emphasizing the need for nations on the Security Council and the UN membership as a whole to pull together, saying it is in everyone’s interest that stability be restored to Iraq ,” the spokesman said. “So once the invasion took place, he did not look back, he looked forward.”

    “But the principle of the Charter, called into question in his view by the invasion, needs to be addressed in a serious way,” Mr. Eckhard added. “And he asked the high level panel to look specifically at that issue. That panel is supposed to report by the end of this year and the Secretary-General would formulate his recommendations and put them to the General Assembly.”

  • The Real Problem on the Indian Sub-continent

    In May 1998, India stunned the world when it successfully conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran, a desert site in the western state of Rajasthan. The tests were reciprocated by its traditional rival, Pakistan , dramatically raising the stakes in the stand-off over Kashmir , one of the world’s longest-running feuds.

    Subsequently, in mid-1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces that had infiltrated Indian-controlled territory in the Kargil area close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. The confrontation between the two countries, just over a year after the nuclear tests, confirmed that the nuclear status didn’t remove the danger of conflict between India and Pakistan; rather, it has increased the stakes if war is to ever occur. Both countries were in an advanced state of nuclear readiness during the entire period of the Kargil conflict. Never before can I remember the tensions within both countries being so high.

    Yet, in a statement in 2001, President Abdul Kalaam of India , continuing to promote and defend the further development of nuclear weapons, asked, “When was the last war with Pakistan? That both sides are nuclear capable has helped not engage in a big war.” 1 However, Kalaam blatantly ignored the fact that tensions escalated during the Kargil conflict due to the nuclearization of the sub-continent. With blinkers on, both President Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are pressing on to develop more advanced nuclear arsenals. Despite limited resources, in a region where there is chronic social and economic problems with hunger and disease rampant in every corner of each country, India and Pakistan continue to reiterate their commitments to develop and deploy nuclear weapons as part of their national security programs.

    But what is needed, right now more than ever, is a realistic consideration of the problems that lie in the internal sphere of each country. Socio-economic, socio-religious, sectarian, and caste conflict in several parts of the two countries are epidemic. The chaos in Karachi including several street riots, ethno-nationalist insurgencies in Assam and Nagaland in Northeast India continue to claim over a hundred lives every year and the recent Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over a thousand innocent people in the western state of Gujarat in India all point to the increasing threats within each country’s domestic sphere. Nuclear weapons are not the answer to these social problems. Furthermore, more than four million in both India and Pakistan live in abject poverty – that is more than half of the combined population of both countries. Mass unemployment and illiteracy are on the rise. The internal debt figures in India alone have more than tripled. There is a lack of basic needs such as clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Infrastructure and the quality of education continue to rapidly diminish. There are rising number of suicides by farmers in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Unbridled drug and arms trafficking in Pakistan are becoming more common and widespread. Spending inadequate financial resources on nuclear weapons is not the way out of these pressing socio-economic problems.

    Additionally, incidents of terrorism within both countries have also increased to include suicide attacks on not only the Indian military and para-military but also on their families. Recent bomb blasts in commercial areas in Karachi are proof that Pakistan isn’t immune from terrorism, well within its own borders, either. Nuclear weapons cannot offer a solution to these flagrant acts of terror. Moreover, there is an increasing criminalization and corruption of politics in India and Pakistan. The degradation of politics is starting to question the credibility of both countries. Nuclear weapons provide no real answer to this range of domestic issues, yet this lesson remains unlearned.

    What is needed from both countries right now is a commitment to the welfare of their populations and a firm plan for decreasing poverty, eradicating disease and death from hunger and starvation. Spending limited resources – financial or otherwise on developing a more complete range of nuclear weapons is not going to help the people of India, Pakistan or, for that matter, the people of Kashmir. Providing basic needs such as drinking water, safe infrastructure and hygienic sanitation facilities is what is urgently required. Increasing the quality of education, decreasing the level of illiteracy and paving the way for increasing youth employment are the needs of the hour. Both India and Pakistan have traditionally focused on threats on their borders. It is now time for each country to look inward and form a strong resolve to solve these deep rooted issues within each society.

    Archana Bharath an is a senior at the University of Michigan and was a Lena Chang Intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Summer 2004.

  • Global Genocide Is Not an Option

    Dear Editor:

    President Bush violated the sacred dreams and goals of the servicemen and women of previous wars who fought and gave their lives that their children and grandchildren would never, ever have to go to war. Preemptive war guarantees the continuation of war as the way to settle differences.

    International law must be the basis for settling the differences between nations just as national laws are used within nations.

    The Bush administration must be replaced by an administration that will honor the goals and dreams of the heroes of World War II especially by substituting international law for international anarchy.

    The existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction has outlawed war forever, because Global Genocide is not an option.

  • How Then Can He Mourn?

    I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

    On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

    But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn.  He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it.  He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and father or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life…. they come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.

    How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war’s aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.  He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

    Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing — to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.  A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children.  He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the thirty-five million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of he chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills   — it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel. But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

    And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

    But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

    The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking , the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

    E.L. Doctorow is one of America ‘s most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late 19th century to the 21st. This piece first appeared in the September 9th issue of the  Easthampton Star.