…and it’s not sexy, either.
PAKISTAN: The “Father of the Pakistani Bomb” and several of his aides are under house arrest following a major scandal amid revelations of secret bank accounts tying them to disclosing nuclear information to Iran and other countries. Street demonstrations by Islamic followers hailed the arrested scientists as heroes. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials are talking of a nuclear black market of “fantastic cleverness.” Faced with this rock-solid, confirmed evidence of providing nuclear assistance to known terrorists, the Bush Administration did not move to invade Pakistan, which has negligible oil reserves.
BULGARIA: The IAEA has assisted Bulgarian authorities with the removal of high-enriched uranium (HEU) stored at a shutdown research reactor in Sofia. The HEU, 36% enriched and in the form of fresh fuel, was airlifted this month from Bulgaria to the Russian Federation, which agreed to take back the fuel and was the original supplier in the early 1960s for the small (2-megawatt) IRT research reactor in Sofia. IAEA safeguards inspectors monitored and verified the packaging of the fuel for transportation. Russia stated its intention to re-fabricate the fuel into low-enriched uranium. There are currently about 80 research reactors around the world that still have HEU subject to international control as potentially weapons-useable material.
LIBYA: United Nations IAEA inspectors have been given responsibility by the United States for identifying the scope of the Libyan nuclear weapons program after being denied such responsibility in Iraq.
IRAN: International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Thursday Iran must cooperate with the nuclear watchdog’s efforts to monitor its atomic energy program or face “serious implications.” ElBaradei added, “They know it’s very important for the agency to come to a conclusion that the Iran program is for peaceful purposes. It would obviously have serious implications if they do not continue to cooperate fully with us in investigating the scope, nature, and content of that program.”
The list goes on and on. In an October interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, El Baradei revealed that the number of nations now believed by the IAEA to be able to create nuclear weapons “is estimated at 35 or 40.” He gave an excellent interview on the entire proliferation issue to the German magazine der Spiegel that is must reading. Highlights:
“An atomic war will come upon us if we do not agree on a new system of international controls,” he said. El Baradei said new controls are needed to prevent the black-market trade in nuclear materials and knowledge by “smart nuclear experts, unscrupulous companies and possibly state organs. Never was the danger as great as today,” he told the weekly newsmagazine. “An atomic war draws nearer if we do not start thinking about a new international control system.”
So…what’s the answer? I dunno, but I believe it would sure be nice to have a rested military and a quiver full of Tomahawk missiles ready to go against true budding nuclear adversaries – instead of squandering those assets against countries who weren’t. A open discussion on this Gordian knot is desirable – both in the comments section below, and certainly on a national level before somebody decides to cut off North Korean food aid the same way support was cut off to the Hubble Space Telescope: click, goodnight.
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4 Responses to Updates On Armageddon
Drog
January 26th, 2004 at 11:18 am
I am by no means an expert in this area, but I certainly agree that the more countries that have nuclear weapons capability, the more likely it is that someone will eventually use them. And so the development of such technology should, of course, be discouraged. However, it continually strikes me as highly hypocritical for the U.S. government to condemn other nations for seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability when they themselves have enough nukes to blow the world up a gazillion times.
In a speech delivered at the NGO Working Group on the Security Council in 1998, Lucy Webster said:
Offering financial aid to countries in return for their NOT developing nukes (as was the case with Korea) doesn’t seem like it will work in the long run–not only are there too many countries, but history has shown that it really is in their best interest to develop nukes. Take India, for example. They were strongly criticized for developing nukes. But now they are a player on the world stage, enjoying the measure of respect that being a nuclear power gives them. A most telling (and often quoted) exchange between PM Gujral and Pres. Clinton occurred on 22 September 1997 at the occasion of the U.N. General Assembly session in New York. Gujral later recounted telling Clinton that an old Indian saying holds that Indians have a third eye. “I told President Clinton that when my third eye looks at the door of the Security Council chamber it sees a little sign that says ‘only those with economic power or nuclear weapons allowed.’ I said to him, ‘it is very difficult to achieve economic wealth’.” India does not yet have the permanent membership on the Security Council that it claims it deserves, but there is certainly a lot of pressure for that to happen.
Perhaps the U.S. and the rest of the Security Council are simply going about this the wrong way. The main reason, I think, that countries pursue nuclear weapons technology is to gain security (when your neighbour has them, you want them too, as is the case with India and China, and with Pakistan and India). What if the nations of the world, including the UN Security Council created a treaty assuring every nation that if they are ever attacked with nuclear weapons, the attacking country would immediately be at war with the rest of the world. A pipe dream, perhaps, but it would certainly help alleviate the my-neighbour-has-nukes-so-I-need-them-too security concerns. And it would also deter countries who want nukes for purely aggressive reasons since they would know that the rest of the world would declare war against them should they ever dare to use their nukes.
BeckySue
January 26th, 2004 at 4:36 pm
So let’s keep filling those quivers already. Rested military? I’ll bet on a seasoned army.
SEWilco
January 29th, 2004 at 12:38 pm
IRAQ: Bur first, let’s begin yet again with The WMD That Wasn’t.
Rickyjames neglected a few links to information about Iraqi WMDs:
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see the leaders of my country
they must have used SciScoop as a source of information
the USA was getting 1/3rd of Iraq oil before the war anyway, and now the Iraqi government will have control of the oil instead of Saddam and his bankers
the goal date may be arbitrary, but there isn’t a standard for this type of thing anyway, leaving right now would not be a good idea, and we don’t know yet if we’ll leave on the goal date without goals being reached
are you complaining about our promising to provide democracy, or that Saddam did not provide it quickly enough?
compared to only $9 billion so far for Operation Comfort and Southern Watch to provide target practice for Saddam’s antiaircraft troops (I don’t know if that includes Clinton bombing in retaliation for siege of Irbil, 3 days of bombing over UN inspections, and destroying the Iraq intelligence headquarters)
is that too low, compared to 5,400 dead per year in Vietnam, and if they’re stretched too thin, should more be sent?
we’re counting the bodies in the mass graves as quickly as we can
do we need more bombs for Bosnia or Haiti, and is the remaining stockpile too small to defend ourselves against Mexico or Canada?
then I certainly want to see a regime change, all right.
You’re in luck. If you vote, you get that chance regularly. If you don’t like that ability, there are several countries where you can go and not have the choice.
rickyjames
January 29th, 2004 at 2:52 pm
Extremely good job coming up with point by point rebutal in your comment, SE. I particularly applaud your use of my own words – there is no more effective technique to win a debate than that.
Let’s see what I can do for damage control here. I’m posting this as a main comment instead of a sub-comment under yours where it belongs because I wrote so much I want everybody to see it. Hope you’ll forgive that stroke of vanity…
Smallpox – you got me. I think it’s probable that Nelja Maltseva did indeed take some of the Russian smallpox strains to Iraq in 1990. Is possession of a smallpox sample cause to invade Iraq after 9/11? Tough call. Possession of a sample is a long way from having bio-weapons ready to go. In my gut I believe that if Iraq had been in cahoots with Al-Queda we’d already have smallpox in New York and the World Trade Center towers would still be standing. If we’re really worried about this, there are a lot of other countries with a lot of other bad bugs we need to conquer and sterilize immediately. Al-Queda could really hurt America just as much with a lot of other stuff like hoof-and-mouth they could sneak in through customs and just start driving around the Midwest with their car windows down as they go by feedlots and cornfields. My decision as pseudo-Prez – we don’t invade because of a report of a 12 year old smallpox sample.
La Palma - I’m on firmer ground here (pun). The solution is not to invade Iraq – it’s to invade the Canary Islands and take over its security from ANY rogue nuke. You’d have Army troops falling all over themselves for THAT duty.
Al-Samoud missiles – Come on, you can’t be serious that these were a reason to justify an invasion. They had a range of only 90 miles – just a few miles over the imposed limit under ideal conditions; the Iraqis claimed engineering tolerances to assure mission success and that’s probably true – and were being destroyed by the UN until the impending invasion of Iraq by the US forced removal of the very UN inspectors who were doing the destructing. In contrast, North Korea has tested a three-stage ICBM that can reach Los Angeles!
Failed to find trace of threat / used SciSCoop as info – Nope, that’s a cheap shot. Kay and Co. could go anywhere they wanted in Iraq and found nothing. Who says what in America is irrelevant to that single fact. I was always suspicious when the UN guys were roaming the country before the war and the US kept saying “we know Iraq’s got stuff”. All Dubya had to do was give Blix ONE SINGLE SET of GPS coordinates to go to ONE SINGLE TIME and find contraband. Then Iraq/UN would look like fools and Dubya/CIA would look like heroes. Didn’t happen.
Grab the oil / now controlled by Iraq – I am doubtful about the Iraqis having true control now over their own oil, and it’s really a judgement call because of the shadowy nature of global oil dealings anyway. Regardless of what percentage of Iraqi oil comes directly to the US, increased Iraqi oil production drops global prices and puts pressure on OPEC, which are certainly two major American goals. Now, lost in all the din and cry in the months and weeks before the war was the almost evangelical American business hopes that Iraq would privatize their oil industry after a war and American companies could again directly buy and own Middle eastern oil fields like they did in the 1950s before the great wave of Arab oil nationalizations. Dream on, that’s turned out to be just another false reason for a Iraq invasion just like WMDs and democracy for Iraqis. I think the only reason we’ve given up on the idea of oil privitaization is because of fear that we’d stir the hornet’s nest up even more than it already is. I still think American policy behind the scenes is to make sure people friendly to the US are in control of Iraqi oil regardless of their nationality. I’ll believe otherwise when Iraq rejoins OPEC as a full member and acts in ways contrary to American interests. Repost then.
arbitrary pre-American-election schedule – Now that we’re in, I don’t think we should just pull up and leave. And we’re not; the US Army is getting ready to stay there for years. What the July 1 date does is help Dubya win his own election and gives him the ability to wash his hands if / when things go sour politically for Iraq in the near future. Rough elections? Theocracy? Civil unrest? Civil war? Dubya sez: ain’t my problem, it’s their problem, they’re independent as of July 1. This date is a set-up to create a fall guy besides one in the White House, period. I personally think this is VERY irresponsible and being done for Dubya’s own benefit, certainly not the Iraqi people’s. And that’s reprehensible.
promised democracy - I’m talking about all of our initial rhetoric about the importance of setting up the Middle East’s first democracy, and how that was a justification for the invasion, which you hear exactly ZERO about since the July 1 date was set up after Bremer was called back to Washington in November for his “emergency meeting”. Another invasion justification, poof, gone. Saddam? He never promised anybody democracy, and I wouldn’t have believed him for a second if he had; what are you talking about?
blowing $150 billion - look, I can’t justify the decade of no-fly zone insanity and its cost. That was a nutty operation whether Bush Sr. started it or Bill ran it. But the fact of the matter is, yeah, a billion a year was a VERY small price to pay to have (a) an established presence not only in Iraq but (b) a air force base in Saudi Arabia which we now don’t have, and (c) world respect for showing restraint instead of world comdemnation for initiating a needless invasion. We’ve paid 10-20 times the money to reduce our presence in the very country – Saudi Arabia – that is ACTUALLY the source of the terrorism that threatens us, and made everybody hate us to boot. That’s a good deal? Not to me. Bases in hot zones are expensive. Wars are more so. We’ve had the expense of a war and we’ve lost our base in Saudi Arabia and world goodwill. Three strikes, that policy is out in my book.
500+ stretched-too-thin American soldiers - So far the comparison with Vietnam is not apples to oranges yet. Of course you lose people in an invasion – our losses for an invasion of Iraq were AMAZINGLY small, as are our losses for continuing occupation of hostile ground. If the hostility level of the population in Iraq ever gets to the hostility level that existed in Vietnam, then you’ll see Vietnam like levels of casualties. That hasn’t happened yet – but just wait and see how the blood flows if a civil war between Shiite, Sunis and Kurds starts, or if the Shiite clerics issue a fatwah against Americans because we don’t hold direct elections this year. The casualty levels in Iraq could rise to hit Vietnam levels of 100 Americans dead per week in a matter of days if the balloon goes up. That place is a powder keg waiting to blow and anybody thinks we have control of the situation over there is nuts. We currently just have the biggest guns but nowhere near the biggest number of warm bodies or suicide bombers devoted to our cause. Under those circumstances, yes, we are stretched too thin. But it’s too late to get more troops there in the near term – they aren’t available anyway – and no politician, least of all Dubya, is going to authorize funds to solve that problem in the long term. The’d rather take a chance with crossed fingers that it’s all going to turn out OK. God help the troops that’re over there if the politicians second-guessing their force levels from over here guess wrong.
uncounted thousands of civilians killed – look, I agree Saddam was a bad man who killed thousands of Kurds and Shiites and other minor ethnic groups that weren’t Suni. What atrocities he did to civilians has no relevence whatsoever to what level of civilian deaths Americans caused. He’s got to live with the morality of his actions; we’ve got to live with the morality of ours. They’re two separate things. To state otherwise is to undermine the whole concept of absolute moral responsibility and replace it with moral relativism. He’s bad because he killed X thousand and we’re good because we only killed Y thousand? Crap. You kill, you’re bad. Now, I certainly recognize the regretable inevitably of killing civilians in a “just” war. This one’s just not just enough for me – in cop slang, it wasn’t a “righteous shoot”. Why? We did not exhaust all other options first. Starting with not giving Blix some GPS coordinates to check out.
wasting our own stockpiled capability - Bosnia? Haiti? Mexico? Canada? Didn’t you read the rest of my article? We are closer to kicking off Korean War II than at any time in the past half-century, and we are closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Korean War was BRUTAL. It killed as many people as the Vietnam War in only three years instead of twelve. The fighting there was at a World War II level of intensity. If we initiate a neo-conservative food embargo against North Korea after a Bush election win, we might very well wake up the next morning needing every laser-guided bomb and Tomahawk missile we can get our hands on to ship to the front line.
If you don’t like that ability – I’ll come right out and say it. I’m not advocating any illegal conspiricies here on SciScoop whatsoever, ever. I treasure my blessed good fortune to talk freely and vote and stand up to say what I think about my country’s leadership being wrong. And I’ll keep doing it until they say it’s treason that aids the enemy under the Patriot II Act and haul me away.
Bottom line – I think you got in a good hit on smallpox, but in my opinion the rest of your comments were misses. Your milage may vary. Again, excellent try at a rebuttal, but you have failed to sway my beliefs. Keep trying; I’m listening…