Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Nuclear Powers
Need to Disarm Before It’s Too Late
Conn
Hallinan
March
11, 2019
Foreign
Policy in Focus
The recent
military clash between India and Pakistan underscores the need for the major
nuclear powers — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France — finally to move
toward fulfilling their obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT).
The Treaty’s
purpose was not simply to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but to serve
as a temporary measure until Article VI could take effect: the
“cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict
and effective international control.”
The 191 countries
that signed the NPT — the most widely subscribed nuclear treaty on the planet —
did so with the understanding that the major powers would de-nuclearize. But in
the 50 years since the Treaty was negotiated, the nuclear powers have yet to
seriously address eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
While over the
years the Americans and the Russians have reduced the number of warheads in
their arsenals, they — along with China — are currently in the midst of a major
modernization of their weapon systems. Instead of a world without nuclear
weapons, it is a world of nuclear apartheid, with the great powers making no
move to downsize their conventional forces.
For non-nuclear
armed countries, this is the worst of all worlds.
There Are No
“Local” Nuclear Wars
The folly of this
approach was all too clear in the recent India and Pakistan dustup. While both
sides appear to be keeping the crisis under control, for the first time in a
very long time, two nuclear powers that border one another exchanged air and
artillery attacks.
While so far
things have not gotten out of hand, both countries recently
introduced military policies that make the possibility of a serious
escalation very real.
On the New Delhi
side is a doctrine called “Cold Start” that permits the Indian military to
penetrate up to 30 kilometers deep into Pakistan if it locates, or is in
pursuit of, “terrorists.” On the Islamabad side is a policy that gives
front-line Pakistani commanders the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons.
The possibility of
a nuclear exchange is enhanced by the disparity between India and Pakistan’s
military forces. One does not have to be Carl von Clausewitz to predict the
likely outcome of a conventional war between a country of 200 million people
and a country of 1.3 billion people.
Pakistan reserves
the right to use nuclear weapons first. India has a “no first
use” policy, but with so many caveats that it is essentially meaningless.
In brief, it wouldn’t take much to ignite a nuclear war between them.
If that happens,
its effects will not be just regional. According to a study by the
University of Colorado, Rutgers University, and UCLA, if Pakistan and India
exchanged 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads (15 kilotons), they would not
only kill or injure 45 million people, but also generate enough smoke to plunge
the world into a 25-year long nuclear winter.
Both countries
have between 130 and 150 warheads apiece.
Temperatures would
drop to Ice Age levels and worldwide rainfall would decline by 6 percent,
triggering major droughts. The Asian Monsoon could be reduced by between 20 and
80 percent, causing widespread regional starvation.
Between the cold
and the drought, global grain production could fall by 20 percent in the first
half decade, and by 10 to 15 percent over the following half decade.
Besides cold and
drought, the ozone loss would be between 20 and 50 percent, which would not
only further damage crops, but harm sea life, in particular plankton. The
reduction of the ozone layer would also increase the rate of skin cancers.
The study
estimates that “two billion people who are now only marginally fed might die
from starvation and disease in the aftermath of a nuclear conflict between
Pakistan and India.”
In short, there is
no such thing as a “local” nuclear war.
The Ultimate
Equalizer
Article VI is the
heart of the NPT, because it not only requires abolishing nuclear weapons but
also addresses the fears that non-nuclear armed nations have about the major
powers’ conventional forces.
A number of
countries — China in particular — were stunned by the conventional firepower
unleashed by the U.S. in its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Though the U.S. occupation
of Iraq took a disastrous turn, the ease with which U.S. forces initially
dispatched the Iraqi army was a sobering lesson for a lot of countries.
In part, it is the
conventional power of countries like the U.S. that fuels the drive by smaller
nations to acquire nuclear weapons.
Libya is a case in
point. That country voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Less than seven years later Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by the U.S. and
NATO. At the time, the North Koreans essentially said, “we told you
so.”
The NPT has done a
generally good job of halting proliferation. While Israel, Pakistan, India, and
North Korea have obtained nuclear weapons — the first three never signed the
Treaty and North Korea withdrew in 2003 — South Africa abandoned its program.
Other nuclear-capable nations like Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, South Korea,
and Saudi Arabia also haven’t joined the nuclear club — yet.
But it is hard to
make a case for non-proliferation when the major nuclear powers insist on
keeping their nuclear arsenals. And one can hardly blame smaller countries for
considering nuclear weapons as a counterbalance to the conventional forces of
more powerful nations like the U.S. and China. If there is anything that might
make Iran abandon its pledge not to build nuclear weapons, it’s all the talk in
Israel, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia about regime change in Tehran.
Regional
Tinderboxes
There are specific
regional problems, the solutions to which would reduce the dangers of a nuclear
clash.
The U.S. has taken
some steps in that direction on the Korean Peninsula by downsizing its yearly
war games with South Korea and Japan. Declaring an end to the almost
70-year-old Korean war and withdrawing some U.S. troops from South Korea would
also reduce tensions.
Halting the
eastward expansion of NATO and ending military exercises on the Russian border
would reduce the chances of a nuclear war in Europe.
In South Asia, the
international community must become involved in a solution to the Kashmir
problem. Kashmir has already led to three wars between India and Pakistan, and
the 1999 Kargil incident came distressingly close to going nuclear.
This
latest crisis started over a February 14 suicide bombing in
Indian-occupied Kashmir that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitaries. While a
horrendous act, the current government of India’s brutal crackdown in Kashmir
has stirred enormous anger among the locals. Kashmir is now one of the
most militarized regions in the world, and India dominates it through a
combination of force and extra-judicial colonial laws — the Public
Safety Act and the Special Powers Act — that allows it to jail people without
charge and bestows immunity on the actions of the Indian army, the
paramilitaries, and the police.
Since
1989, the conflict has claimed more than 70,000 lives and seen tens
of thousands of others “disappeared,” injured, or imprisoned.
India blames the
suicide attack on Pakistan, which has a past track record of so doing. But that
might not be the case here. Even though a Pakistani-based terrorist
organization, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), claims credit, both sides need to
investigate the incident. It is not unlikely that the attack was homegrown —
the bomber was Kashmiri — although possibly aided by JeM. It is also true that
Pakistan does not have total control over the myriad of militant groups that
operate within its borders. The Pakistani Army, for instance, is at war with its
homegrown Taliban.
The Kashmir
question is a complex one, but solutions are out there. The United Nations
originally pledged to sponsor a plebiscite in Kashmir to let the
local people decide if they want to be part of India, Pakistan, or independent.
Such a plebiscite should go forward. What cannot continue is the ongoing
military occupation of 10 million people, most of whom don’t want India there.
Kashmir is no
longer a regional matter. Nuclear weapons threaten not only Pakistanis and
Indians, but, indeed, the whole world. The major nuclear powers must begin to
move toward fulfilling Article VI of the NPT, or sooner or later our luck will
run out.
[Foreign Policy In
Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read
at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com.]
Thanks to the
author for sending this to Portside.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"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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