Illegal US Nuclear Weapons Handouts
Posted
By John Laforge On September 27, 2018 @ 2:00 am In
articles 2015,Leading Article |
Photo Source MAPW Australia
| CC BY 2.0
The US
military practice of placing nuclear weapons in five other countries (no other
nuclear power does this) is a legal and political embarrassment for US
diplomacy. That’s why all the governments involved refuse to “confirm or deny”
the practice of “nuclear sharing” or the locations of the B61 free-fall gravity
bombs in question.
Expert
analysts and observers agree that the United States currently deploys
150-to-180 of these nuclear weapons at bases in Germany, Italy, The
Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium. The authors of the January 2018 report
“Building a Safe, Secure, and Credible NATO Nuclear Posture” take for granted the
open secret that nuclear sharing is ongoing even though all six countries are
signatory parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT).
In a paper for the journal Science
for Democratic Action, German weapons expert Otfried Nassauer,
director of Berlin’s Information Center for Transatlantic Security, concluded,
“NATO’s program of ‘nuclear sharing’ with five European countries probably
violates Articles I and II of the Treaty.”
Article I
prohibits nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT from sharing their
weapons. It says: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not
to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly,
or indirectly….” Article II, the corollary commitment, states says: “Each
non-nuclear weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the
transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices
directly, or indirectly … or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices….”
What nuclear sharing means
in practice
The five
NATO countries currently hosting US H-bombs on their air bases are officially
“non-nuclear weapons states.” But as Nassauer reports, “Under NATO nuclear
sharing in times of war, the US would hand control of these nuclear weapons
over to the non-nuclear weapon states’ pilots for use with aircraft from
non-nuclear weapon states. Once the bomb is loaded aboard, once the correct
Permissive Action Link code has been entered by the US soldiers guarding the
weapons, and once the aircraft begins its mission, control over the respective
weapon(s) has been transferred. That is the operational, technical part of what
is called ‘nuclear sharing.’”
This
flaunting of the NPT is what peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic
refer to when calling the US bombs in Europe “illegal.” Nassauer notes, “The
pilots for these aircraft are provided with training specific to use nuclear
weapons. The air force units to which these pilots and aircraft belong have the
capability to play a part in NATO nuclear planning, including assigning a
target, selecting the yield of the warhead for the target, and planning a
specific mission for the use of the bombs.”
“NATO
nuclear sharing,” Nassauer writes, “was described in 1964 by one member of the
US National Security Council … as meaning that ‘the non-nuclear NATO-partners
in effect become nuclear powers in time of war.’ The concern is that, at the
moment the aircraft loaded with the bomb is on the runway ready to start, the
control of the weapon is turned over from the US, a nuclear weapon state, to
non-nuclear weapon states. … To my understanding, this is in violation of the
spirit if not the text of Articles I and II of the NPT.”
How Do the US and its
Allies Explain their Lawlessness?
An
undated, 1960s-era letter from then-US Secretary of State Rusk explained the US
‘interpretation’ of the NPT. The pretext for ignoring the treaty’s plain
language, the Rusk letter “argues that the NPT does not specify what is
allowed, but only what is forbidden. In this view, everything that is not
forbidden by the NPT is allowed,” Nassauer explained.
In its
most absurd section, Rusk simply denies the treaty’s obvious purpose and
intent. “Since the treaty doesn’t explicitly talk about the deployment of
nuclear warheads in countries that are non-nuclear weapon states,” Nassauer
writes, “such deployments are considered legal under the NPT.”
It is so
easy to show that the United States and its nuclear sharing partners are in
violation of the NPT, the governments involved work hard pretending there is
nothing to worry about no lawbreaking underway, no reason to demand answers.
This is why so many activists across Europe have become nonviolently
disobedient at the air bases involved.
The transparent unlawfulness of
NATO’s nuclear war planning is also the reason why prosecutors in Germany don’t
dare bring serious charges against civil resisters; even those who have cut
fences and occupied hot weapons bunkers in broad daylight. Some Air Force
witness might testify at trial that US nuclear weapons are on base.
Article
printed from www.counterpunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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