It is revealing to note that during
the present 2016 US presidential campaign, none of the candidates have been
asked much about what they believe the nation’s nuclear doctrine should be. It’s
the trillion-dollar question that has been kept out of popular discourse. The
candidates have not been asked such questions as whether “nuclear sharing”
among NATO allies violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), or whether
America is obliged under the treaty to treat the abolition of the nuclear
arsenal as an urgent matter. Do they agree with the previous administration’s
decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pursue a doctrine of
nuclear primacy toward Russia and China? [1] The average reader of this blog is
probably more familiar with these issues, but the candidates would likely be at
a loss as to how to answer these questions. Either they couldn’t answer or they
wouldn’t want to.
Public anxiety about nuclear war has
faded since the 1990s. Back then there were some reasons to relax. The arsenals
of the superpowers decreased from 60,000 to 14,000 warheads, and the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty led to the elimination of short-range missiles and
tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and Western Russia. During the late Gorbachev
and early Yeltsin years, there was enough trust in the bilateral relationship
for Americans and Russians to feel like they would get along as normally as any
other pair of countries. Russia was too weak and troubled to be considered much
of a threat.
All of this started to change in the
late 1990s when Russia and the US took up different sides in the Serbia-Kosovo
conflict, NATO expanded eastward, and America meddled in the internal affairs
of what is referred to as “the former Soviet space.” In this century, since
Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been steadily demonized and restored
to its status as most favored threat to American hegemony.
During the Bush presidency, while
everyone was distracted by the war on terror and the campaigns in Afghanistan
and Iraq, the Pentagon established a new nuclear doctrine, which was actually
the old dream from the 1940s of establishing nuclear primacy: the possession of
superior capabilities that could, in a first strike, neutralize all of an
opponent’s nuclear weapons—the winnable nuclear war. America had walked out of the ABM treaty a few years earlier and so it was also working on "missile defense" systems which, logically, have offensive purposes, as anti-missile missiles allow the possessor to neutralize a an enemy's retaliation to its own first strike.
An article in the March 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs this announced this new status of nuclear primacy and caused an uproar in both Washington and Moscow [2]. In the ten years that have passed Russia has scrambled to upgrade its capabilities and restore nuclear parity. Not coincidentally, relations between the two countries have worsened while the significance of this historic change has been largely forgotten.
An article in the March 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs this announced this new status of nuclear primacy and caused an uproar in both Washington and Moscow [2]. In the ten years that have passed Russia has scrambled to upgrade its capabilities and restore nuclear parity. Not coincidentally, relations between the two countries have worsened while the significance of this historic change has been largely forgotten.
Now that NATO and the US Pacific
alliance (with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines and others) are carrying
out provocations against Russia and China, the issue is finally appearing in
some circles of elite opinion in the American media, but it is still not a popular
campaign issue.
If any of the presidential candidates
were asked whether they were hawks, doves or owls on the question of nuclear
primacy, they wouldn’t know for sure what was being asked. Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump would probably reflexively claim to be hawks, while Bernie Sanders
would probably defer and say, “I’ll get back to you on that one.” He has
devoted so little attention to foreign policy during his campaign that he has
actually gone on record as saying Qatar has to do more to fight ISIS—oblivious
to the well-known fact that Qatar is one of the Middle Eastern American allies that
has abided and assisted ISIS as a tool for de-stabilizing Syria and
ousting its head of state. Based on his view of the problem, we have to wonder
if Bernie Sanders has any ideas for what to do about Turkey, NATO partner and
sharer of American nuclear weapons. Turkey has facilitated ISIS in selling oil
from the wells it controlled before the Russian intervention, and it is
determined to undermine the Kurdish forces that have been one of the most
effective anti-ISIS fighters. This issue has been widely reported, but the
radical anti-war candidate in the presidential race seems to have no awareness
of it, or interest in talking about it.[3]
The question about hawk, dove or owl
relates the question above: Do you agree with the previous administration’s
decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pursue a doctrine of
nuclear primacy toward Russia and China?
Hawks believe that American hegemony
is benevolent, and even if that belief isn’t sincere, they say that nuclear primacy
is a worthwhile pursuit. If America has the means to become the dominant force
in the world, it should seize the opportunity because, in the world view of
hawks, one is either the hunter or the hunted.
Doves believe the world will never see
a hegemon as benevolent, regardless of the high esteem the hegemon has for
itself. The world is better off being multi-polar. Nations should achieve peace
through diplomacy, parity of forces, international law, and mutual regard for
each other’s interests. The very act of threatening nuclear attack, which is
implicit in the possession of nuclear weapons, is morally reprehensible.
Owls believe the doctrine of nuclear
primacy madly risks nuclear Armageddon, by accident or design, no matter how
good the odds might be that America could wipe out all of an adversary’s
nuclear arsenal before being hit with even one retaliatory strike. The owls
might say the doves are naïve, but they say the hawkish approach is reckless
and unwise.
Even if America did not initiate nuclear
war, it would still share responsibility for the outbreak of nuclear war—it
must have done something to provoke a first strike—something like, let’s say,
maintaining a doctrine of nuclear primacy? But what if America did strike
first? Even if the possessor of nuclear primacy could prevail and wipe out all
of its adversary’s nuclear capability without being hit by even one nuclear
bomb (doubtful), the after-effects would be an ecological and a humanitarian
catastrophe of unprecedented and unpredictable consequences, with blowback and
fallout on the perpetrator that would make this the most Pyrrhic victory in
history. It would be unlikely that such a nation could survive the wrath of the
global community and the chaos that would follow a first strike that would have
to consist of hundreds of nuclear detonations.
Obviously, nuclear primacy serves
primarily as a deterrent and an instrument for establishing global hegemony. The
possessor of nuclear primacy knows the hardware can never be used, but there is
great value in making others wonder if it might
be used, which is why no one promises the meaningless promise of no-first-use.
The threats, the wielding of the club—these are the non-explosive uses of
nuclear weapons that are coveted in the pursuit of nuclear primacy. And of
course, there is money to be made in all of this. The trillion-dollar nuclear
modernization program is going to stuff corporate profits and keep suburban
real estate prices high in places like Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Meanwhile, the second-tier adversaries
China and Russia know that the possessor of nuclear primacy wouldn’t dare
exercise its advantage, so they can push back with asymmetrical tactics—propaganda,
diplomacy, alliance formation, economic ties, support for the superpower’s
adversaries in regional wars, support for adversaries’ dissidents, and so on.
The nations of the world have more urgent things to do than to get caught up in
this game, but this is the distraction that nuclear weapons bring on.
Violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), in word and/or in spirit
Of all the treaties concerning nuclear
weapons, none is more important than the NPT. [4] It is also fatally flawed because
it has allowed the nuclear powers to get away with saying that whatever is not
forbidden is allowed. The wording of the treaty does not clearly require and
set a timeline for disarmament, and it doesn’t specifically forbid the “sharing”
of nuclear weapons and the provision of nuclear “umbrellas” to allies. Finally,
it gives all signatories the right to develop nuclear energy, under the
mistaken belief that the proliferation of nuclear waste can be controlled in a
way that doesn’t lead to fissionable waste products being used to make weapons.
Even if this level of control could be achieved, much of the global population
now considers the existence of nuclear waste to be an unacceptable ecological hazard
and burden on future generations. The Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and
Fukushima meltdowns all happened after the treaty was drafted in the late 1960s.
One can only conclude from the failure
of the treaty to lead to disarmament that the flaws in it are the very reason
that it exists at all. If it didn’t provide loopholes to the nuclear powers,
they never would have signed it. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also has an escape clause that allows the US to resume testing if confidence is ever lost in the viability of the nuclear arsenal. [5]
Nuclear Sharing
The United States shares nuclear
weapons with several countries in NATO—The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany,
Italy, and Turkey. [6] The UK and France have their own nukes. The weapons
remain under American control while on NATO bases, but soldiers of the host
countries are trained in how to take over bombing missions in the event of war.
The NPT prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons, but since the weapons remain
under American possession and control, the US claims this is not a treaty
violation. The weapons would be transferred only after war has been declared,
in which case the treaty would no longer be in force. This of course is absurd hair-splitting
and a violation of the spirit of the treaty.
Likewise, the offer of a nuclear
umbrella to allies does nothing to stop proliferation. These allies should be
saying no thanks to such protection because it also turns the ally into a target.
It would be much better to declare neutrality and rebuke the nuclear powers, if
they are indeed sincere about eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.
Nonetheless, the US claims that the sharing of nuclear weapons or a nuclear
umbrella stops allies from wanting their own arsenals, so these agreements are supposedly
in the spirit of the NPT. Yet these countries are already signatories of the
NPT. If we are to assume that they would abrogate the treaty (only three months’
notice required) at any time in order to become nuclear powers, we have to ask
if treaties are worth the paper they are written on—worth all the effort that
goes into making them, and worthy of faith placed in them. If they truly are so
fragile, treaties are just bare threads with which the human race sometimes
manages to restrain is basest impulses.
The numerous civil society groups
campaigning for nuclear disarmament may be just as ineffective. The
modernization program, the nuclear primacy doctrine and the escalating tensions
with Russia and China have all occurred while there has been an apparent
renaissance of the anti-nuclear campaigns that went dormant in the 1990s. While
their positive effects are hard to prove, they may be creating an illusion that
change is on the way when things are actually getting worse.
The new deployment of anti-missile
installations in Poland and Romania, along with NATO exercises to deter Russian
aggression, have exasperated Russian president Vladimir Putin. He has recently
taken to talking directly to Western journalists in various forums to counter
the propaganda campaign against him and Russia, and to argue that Russia poses
no threat to anyone. A recent example:
The “Iranian threat” does not exist,
but the NATO Missile Defense System is being positioned in Europe. That means
we were right when we said that their reasons are not genuine. They were not
being open with us—always referring to the “Iranian threat” in order to justify
this system. Once again they lied to us. Now the system is functioning and
being loaded with missiles. As you journalists should know, these missiles are
put into capsules which are used in the Tomahawk long range missile system. So
these are being loaded with missiles that can penetrate territories within a
500-km range. But we know that technologies advance, and we even know in which
year the US will accomplish the next missile. This missile will be able to
penetrate distances up to 1,000 km and even farther. And from that moment on,
they will start to directly threaten Russia’s nuclear potential. We know year
by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you
[journalists] that they tell tall tales to, and you buy them and spread them to
the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the
impending danger. This is what worries me. How do you not understand that the
world is being pulled in an irreversible direction while they pretend that nothing
is going on? I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.” [7]
To note how extraordinary this conversation
with the foreign media is, one only has to imagine President Obama doing the
same thing: stating his case to a room full of journalists, business leaders
and intellectuals from Russia, China and Latin America, for whom he has
provided translators (imagine a US president patiently waiting for all the
dialog to be translated). It never happens. Americans these days prefer to give speeches to each other on the decks of aircraft carriers. President Obama can’t speak and wouldn't speak to skeptical foreign audiences because the “Russian aggression” ruse is a baseless assertion. America’s
actions this century—drone warfare, invading nations and toppling leaders
without UN authority, inciting revolt in foreign countries, refusing to live up
to treaty obligations and follow UN resolutions—these actions are all indefensible
under international law, not to mention common sense understandings of fairness
and morality in international relations.
It seems that whatever happens in the
street and in civil society no longer has any effect on the decisions made by the
advocates of war. They have learned to tune out whatever happens outside the
gates. In early 2003, millions of people poured into the streets of the world’s
capital cities to object to the coming illegal invasion of Iraq. In London, the
prime minister’s residence was surrounded by 1,000,000 people angrily roaring for
no war. Tony Blair was inside for hours listening to the throng, but it didn’t
stop him from going along with American plans. [8]
There may be only two ways to get off
the road to ruin. One would be a radical change in the policies of the executive,
legislative and judicial branches of the American government. To renounce
nuclear primacy and begin meaningful steps toward nuclear disarmament, the
American people would have to elect a majority of unbought representatives who
are ready to make these goals a top priority, and the judiciary could take up
the cause as a civil rights issue (the right under the constitution to live
free of the threat of nuclear annihilation). There is no reason to believe that
advocacy groups and street demonstrations have had any effect on those in power
or on the list of issues that voters care about. Furthermore, even if nuclear
abolition became the will of the majority, some rather undemocratic methods
would probably be employed to neutralize it. Recent “irregularities” in US
primary voting suggest that the progressive insurgency has threatened the
established two-party system and led it to carry out widespread electoral fraud.
[9]
With the American voter apathetic or disenfranchised
by this dysfunctional voting infrastructure, there is only the second option. Outside
pressure is the only way left to influence American foreign policy. Russia’s
and China’s diplomatic and public relations efforts can influence global opinion,
and if European leaders and other allies can start to push back and think for
themselves, they may be able to derail the wildest ambitions of the American
agenda. In June 2016, as NATO was preparing to carry out operations against imagined
Russian aggression in the Baltic states, German defense minister, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, voiced a dissenting view:
What we should not do now is inflame
the situation with saber-rattling and warmongering. Whoever believes that a
symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is
mistaken. We are well-advised not to create pretexts to renew an old
confrontation. [10]
The same week, one NATO general, Petr
Pavel, also pointed at the naked emperor and broke with consensus opinion:
It is not the aim of NATO to create a
military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression because such aggression
is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing. [11]
[12]
These men are a small minority, and
don’t expect them to be quoted much in British, Canadian or American media.
Nonetheless, their comments could be a sign that a few cooler heads are daring
to speak out.
Even without access to intelligence,
General Pavel could see the flawed logic apparent to any observer. If it is
mutually understood that America and NATO have vastly superior conventional and
nuclear advantages, why would Russia invade a NATO member? Knowing the
suffering of the Russian people in WWII, and knowing the problems that
contemporary Russia must contend with in its own territory, why would anyone
believe that it is about to launch a war of aggression? There is no plausible
motive. Yet there are some obvious motives for the other side to exaggerate the
threat. As in any murder investigation, one just needs to ask cui bono? NATO countries have to conjure
the Russian threat in order to justify the existence of NATO. They are
increasing the percentage of GDP they spend on military at the very time they
are enforcing austerity on their own citizens in social spending. The most
plausible ultimate cause of all this belligerence is arms manufacturers seeking
an endless expansion of markets and profits. They will not stop, as Isaac
Newton might say if he were alive, until they are met with an equal and opposite
force.
Notes
[1]
John Steinbach, “The Bush Administration, U.S. Nuclear
War-Fighting Policy & the War On Iraq,” Counterpunch,
May 2016.
[3]
Stehen Lendman, “More
Evidence of Turkey’s Support of the Islamic State (ISIS), in Liaison with US
and NATO,” Global Research, January 12,
2016.
[5] Joseph Masco, The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 342.
[8]
“British
Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of
Africa and His New Novel, ‘Our Kind of Traitor’,” Democracy
Now October 11, 2010.
[10] Lizzie Dearden, “German
foreign minister accuses NATO of ‘warmongering’ with military exercises that
could worsen tensions with Russia,” The
Independent, June 18, 2016.
[11] “NATO
Commander Admits There’s No Threat of Russia Invading the Baltics,” Sputnik News, June 21, 2016.
[12]
Jerry Brown, “A Stark Nuclear Warning: Review of ‘My
Journey at the Nuclear Brink’ by William Perry,” The
New York Review, July 14, 2016 Issue.
If readers
would like to protest that I have cited too many suspect Russian sources, this
review of a book by a 60-year veteran of the American defense establishment
provides similar support. William Perry has described how he, as secretary of
defense, opposed the eastward expansion of NATO during the second term of the
Clinton presidency, but was overruled.