The Perfect Nuclear Storm is Brewing

By: Douglas Mattern - 06/26/03

When the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference was held in New York city in the year 2000, the nuclear weapons states make a commitment to an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons. This was an empty and hypocritical promise, and experts now agree the danger of nuclear proliferation is worse than in the past 50 years.

The NPT was undermined, if not annihilated, when President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, which states the United States reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force-including nuclear weapons---to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies. William Arkin, a military analyst writes that the Bush administration's war planning "moves nuclear weapons out of their along-established special category and lumps them in with all the other military options."

The entire record of the Bush Administration on the nuclear issue is abominable. This includes refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Bat Treaty, abrogating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the intention to resume nuclear testing to build a new category of nuclear weapons, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. This weapon would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional bunker-busting weapons used in "Shock and Awe" bombing of Iraq.

The addition of India and Pakistan, and possibly North Korea, to the macabre nuclear club also increases the nuclear danger. Now add a recent study by the RAND think-tank that gives a frightening assessment of Russian's strategic capabilities. Former Senator Sam Nunn said "the risk has increased for a perfect storm in terms of a nuclear miscalculation or an accident."

The RAND study lists three reasons for this development.

* The U.S. and Russia maintain large nuclear forces on "hair-trigger" alert that could be launched in minutes and destroy both countries in an hour.

* Economic and social problems have led Russia to rely more on nuclear arms.

* The vulnerability of Russian forces is enhanced by the capability of U.S. forces to deliver accurate and devastating strikes.

The Rand report gives three gruesome scenarios, which could erupt at any time:

* An intentional unauthorized nuclear weapon launch by a terrorists or rogue commander

* A missile launched by mistake

* An intentional launch of nuclear weapons based on incorrect or incomplete information.

Robert McNamara acknowledged that during the Cuban missile crisis "we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without realizing it." McNamara said: "It's no credit to us that we missed nuclear war--at least we had to be lucky as well as wise." We can only guess how many times we have been lucky and escaped nuclear destruction throughout the Cold War. There are many frightening close calls that received little media coverage.

Bruce Blair, Director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) and a former Minuteman Missile Launch Officer, reminds us that both the U.S. and Russia remain preoccupied with preparing to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other on short notice. Both sides have thousands of nuclear warheads on a hair-trigger alert and aimed at each other. U.S. spy planes monitor the Russian coast and U.S. submarines still trail Russian submarines as soon as they leave port. The U.S. spends an average of $27 billion annually preparing to fight a nuclear war.

In a "doomsday" scenario, the CDI reports that Russia has come online at their Kovzvinsky Mountain facility with equipment designed to ensure a "quasi-automatic" Russian missile retaliation in case a U.S. first strike destroys their nuclear chain of command.

Terrorism is a burning problems to counter, but by far the greatest terrorism is that each and every day for the past several decades, and in this third year of a new millennium, we are daily under the threat of nuclear incineration whether by accident, miscalculation, or by design.

McGeorge Bundy, former assistant to President Kennedy, said: "In the real world even one hydrogen bomb on one city would be a catastrophe; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history. A hundred or even less would be the end of civilization"

There are 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world today and only a fool could believe we can exist indefinitely without these weapons being used. It's utter madness, and it's imperative that thinking people join together and declare unequivocally that, similar to the TV anchorman in the movie Network, WE ARE MAD AS HELL AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

Liberation from the nuclear nightmare and the "architects of destruction" is the first priority to which we must hold every politician and policy maker, beginning with the reconstituted cold warrior hawks that comprise the Bush Administration.

Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status. The website for AWC is www.worldcitizens.org Douglas is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant.