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CounterPunch
January
10, 2003
Washington's
Nuclear Policy:
Moral Clarity or Double Standards?
By MUQTEDAR KHAN
Have you ever seen an alcoholic preaching abstinence
and advocating prohibition? Just listen to President George
W. Bush lecturing the world on the threat from Iraq and North
Korea and on the virtues of nuclear non-proliferation. He is
the commander-in-chief of a military force that not only possesses
and maintains nearly 10,000 nuclear weapons but also boasts
an array of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical
and biological arsenals. The American position on nuclear weapons
is rife with hypocrisy and layered with double standards.
The U.S. is the number one proliferator
of weapons in terms of marketing. Even in regions such as the
Middle East where peace is deemed crucial to American interests,
America is the top exporter of advanced weapons including strategic
fighters (such as F-16s) and missiles to both sides--Israel
and Arabs. The U.S. sold nearly $13.9 billion in weaponry to
governments, and licensed nearly $30 billion in commerciial
sales in 2001. If the next Arab-Israeli war involves vastly
more sophisticated and dangerous weapons than ever before,
we will have only the U.S. to thank for it.
The U.S. was not only the first to produce
nuclear weapons, but to date remains the only nation in the
world to have used nuclear weapons, more than once. Even now,
long after the end of the cold war, it continues to possess
chemical and biological weapons and has just announced a massive
new missile system that will enhance its global military domination--in
turn facilitating an enhanced unilateralist posture. It will
also ensure a new arms race by triggering a security dilemmaa
for other nations wary of Washington's neo-imperial agenda.
Washington continues to maintain close
relations with such nations as India, Pakistan, and Israel that
have refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and
are widely known to possess significant nuclear arsenals. Israel
is reputed to have anywhere between 50-200 illegal nukes. Yet
the Bush administration is determined to intimidate and punish
nations that evidently do not have nuclear weapons but only
nuclear ambitions, such as Iran and Iraq. The nuclear ambitions
of these two nations are not unlike those that spurred India,
Israel, and Pakistan to develop their own nukes.
To this day the U.S. has never expressed
any concern over the illegal nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction that Israel possesses. Now in the post-9/11 climate,
Washington has decided that its own interests are best served
by ignoring the fact that India and Pakistan also continue to
defy not only the nuclear non-proliferation regime but also
the nuclear test ban regime.
According to Washington, Iraq and Iran
nurse an unquenchable thirst for nuclear weapons. American propagandists
have also argued that these nations desire these weapons of
mass destruction for the explicit purpose of using them against
the U.S. and its allies (read Israel). Unless it can be demonstrated
that both Iran and Iraq have a very strong desire to self-destruct
it is difficult to understand why any nation would be willing
to sign its own death warrant by attacking the United States.
The world has not forgotten what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Children born in those cities still bear signs of the U.S. nuclear
attacks.
In his first State of the Union address,
President Bush made his intentions clear about the "axis
of evil"--Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. He was determined
to eliminate their capacity to threaten America or its allies.
But now we havve a strange situation. Iraq denies that it has
any weapons of mass destruction and so far after over 200 inspections
the UN inspectors have discovered nothing. The U.S. claims it
has certain knowledge of Iraq's evil weapons and even after
sharing its "intelligence" with the inspectors, nothing
has been discovered. In contrast, North Korea has not only
declared that it has an active nuclear weapons program but is
determined to become a nuclear power in the immediate future.
But the U.S. is targeting Iraq for a massive military attack
while ruling out any military option against North Korea
On many levels, America's current war
plans raise questions about its moral clarity. Washington articulates
policy in idealistic terms but applies it in realistic fashion.
If the objective is to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons,
then the U.S. must continue to pressure those who already have
them (India, Pakistan, and Israel) and those who are about to
have them (North Korea) just as much if not more than those
who aspire to them (Iraq and Iran).
And if nuclear weapons are indeed seen
as a danger to world peace, then Washington should work to denuclearize
South Asia and the Middle East by persuading India, Pakistan,
and Israel to voluntarily denuclearize (like Sweden, South
Africa, Argentina, and Brazil) and submit to inspection regimes.
At the same time, the U.S. should also give the world a firm
timetable on its own denuclearization program (in concert with
UK, France, Russia, and China) and immediately cease all further
development and production of all weapons of mass destruction.
If these measures are impossible for reasons of realpolitik,
then President Bush should at lest spare us the tedious rhetoric
about U.S. "moral clarity" and the battle between
good and evil, and let his actions and policies speak for themselves.
Muqtedar Khan
is a contributor to Foreign
Policy In Focus and Director of International Studies
at Adrian College. He is the author of the recent book American
Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom. He can be reached
at: muqtedar@yahoo.com
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