Issue 16: May 2002

This commentary by Ramesh Thakur, UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme, appeared in the Japan Times of April 1. These are his personal views.

The role of nuclear weapons is deterrence

How do we justify the paradox of using a weapon of mass destruction to stop others from acquiring them?

The United States has the largest and most powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. The Sept. 11 tragedy concentrated its mind on the dangers of terrorist attacks using biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and on the need for pre-emptive strikes as a form of active defense if credible evidence exists that such attacks are planned.

America emerged from the Sept. 11 attacks a nation inflamed, a nation enraged, but also a nation aroused. The tragedy inflicted on the American body politic a pain that will not sleep, and aroused an anger in the Bush administration that will not easily be appeased.

The world grieved with America, understood its pain, shared its anger, and generally supported the ensuing "war on terrorism." This sympathy and goodwill is in danger of being dissipated due to two sets of anxieties.

On the one hand, it has been nothing short of a revelation to realize just how many governments have been engaged in waging their own wars on terrorism, rather than using the opportunity to suppress opponents, dissenters and other assorted troublemakers in their midst.

On the other hand, there is growing international unease that the Bush administration is changing the war's agenda in order to deal with unfinished business in Iraq and Somalia. This is made possible by the military successes in Afghanistan, which were based on long-distance, over-the-horizon warfare utilizing unmatched technological advances and local warrior allies. The U.S. can do today what was not within its grasp in earlier times. In the Persian Gulf, Kosovo and Afghanistan wars, it was the critics who turned out to be still fighting the last war; the generals had moved decisively and brilliantly to preparing for the next one.

The series of public policy speeches and pronouncements, combined with curiously timed leaks, reveal a pattern of preparing the political ground for a military offensive against Iraq in the foreseeable future. More worryingly, they suggest the possibility of nuclear weapons being used as a last resort, or even earlier as the weapon of choice to launch clinically effective strikes.

In his State of the Union address in January, President George W. Bush declared that an Iraq-Iran-North Korea "axis of evil" threatened the peace and welfare of the world. He insisted that the U.S. would not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's most destructive weapons. The language and the message was repeated during his East Asian tour in February. And now we have the leak of the Nuclear Posture Review, which identifies countries against whom contingency plans have been drawn for the use of nuclear weapons.

The constant reference in recent weeks to the risks posed to America from weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, may well comprise part of the political-psychological strategy of making the use of nuclear weapons more acceptable to American public opinion. Language is not always neutral, and often contains powerful codes of permissible and impermissible behavior. The fact that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945 in itself contains one of the most powerful taboos against their use today.

The effort to expand the role of nuclear weapons as a counter to the development or acquisition of WMD by "rogue states" (or those comprising the axis of evil) is a threat to arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. It is not clear that biological, chemical and nuclear weapons belong in one conceptual category.

Looking at the long-lasting and particularly traumatic conflicts in Africa and Asia (Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), it is also clear that the real WMD are small arms and land mines. Light arms are the weapons of choice in these types of conflict because they are inexpensive, extremely user-friendly, easy to conceal and smuggle across borders, rugged and durable, easy to dismantle and reassemble -- and extremely lethal.

In a provocative essay (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999), John Mueller and Karl Mueller argued that sanctions caused more deaths in the 20th century than all WMD throughout history.

The justification of nuclear weapons as the weapon to counter WMD, if accepted in one case, could be claimed by others interested in acquiring nuclear weapons -- especially if they had suffered the threat or use of biochemical weapons. Abolitionists never accepted the justification for nuclear weapons. In the past, even advocates for the utility of nuclear weapons restricted their role to deterring and countering only nuclear weapons. The language of WMD is designed to justify an expansion in the role of nuclear weapon doctrines from countering nuclear to biological and chemical weapons as well.

The legitimization of nuclear weapons as usable against biochemical threats would thus have grave consequences for nuclear nonproliferation. It would be contrary to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its associated declarations and promises. It is hard to see how a dramatic deterioration of international security could contribute to an enhancement of any country's national security.

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