Myth of "global zero"
Photo: Polishhomefoundation.org
The world is haunted by its own making nuclear weapons, though this argument makes sense but the growing complexity of international politics, nuclear weapons being inseparably linked, does not allow the strategists to think of a world beyond nuclear shield. This debate has grown bigger with the Obama administration's dismantling of the last US biggest B53 nuclear bomb, a Cold War relic 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Though the US is considering this development as a milestone in President Obama's mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the end of the era of big megaton bombs, the world is not naive enough to accept such claim, rather some thinks of it as a strategic approach to increase US moral authority to take actions against Iran, supported by a subsequent IAEA's report claiming to find evidence of nuclear weapons development by Iran. The idea of a nuclear free world is a postmodern version of an old idea, general and complete disarmament that has never been successful in actual measures. It begins with a "global zero" concept that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007, under the title "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons" signed by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn. There are currently 26,000 nuclear warheads ready to go -- 96% of which are controlled by the United States and Russia. These two countries alone could unleash the power of 70,000 Hiroshimas in a matter of minutes. Keeping this in mind, nuclear disarmament advocates consider nuclear weapons as the greatest single threat to the survival of humanity. They argue that deterrent of value nuclear weapons is now outweighed by the dangers of proliferation and nuclear terrorism, having the potential "downward spiral" that could lead the world into the dangerous disorder of a fast-growing number of nuclear-armed states -- North Korea already, with Iran and others to follow. They proposed the relinquishment of all nukes by 2030 and White House dubbed it as "nuclear spring" that comes to signify the apex of arms-control. Grippingly, Obama proposed a nuclear energy bank that nations could access to meet their requirements for peaceful use of nuclear energy. A complete nuclear disarmament is a utopia. The first and foremost problem here reflects the deficiency of trust and verification of the implementation of disarmament clauses. States will hardly be convinced without concrete evidence that others are destroying their stockpiles and capabilities and still they will be doubtful of the big powers who can secretly maintain their ability to regenerate nuclear weapons again. Since the Global zero is proposing to dismantle US stockpiles at the very last moment when others have already relinquished their stores, countries like India, China, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea will never be willing to jump into the same bandwagon. Regional geopolitical realities such as those of Israel, and also of Pakistan and North Korea, their existence as independent states largely depend on their possession of nuclear weapons. Nuclear disarmament for them is almost the same as compromising with their sovereignty and territorial integrity. The smaller and less powerful the country, the more beneficial nuclear weapons are. North Korea, as instance, has rendered itself immune from attack for fear of the consequences. The fear of a rising Chinese ascendancy leaves less room for the US to destroy its apocalyptic bomb, the key pillar of military preeminence, since it is still the only stick by which U.S. dream to rule the world in the coming decades. Besides, countries operating under US security umbrella in the important strategic regions and NATO will find this disarmament Zion as objectionable and impairment to national and regional security. What makes the global zero impossibe is that US itself is following a double standard policy. Obama pledges, downgrading the role ascribed to nuclear weapons in the US national security doctrines, to ratify test ban treaty and convene global summit for eventual elimination of nuclear stockpiles. He also reaffirmed commitment to reach agreement on a new strategic arms reduction treaty (Start) with Russia cutting warheads by around one third by the end of this year and to secure "loose nukes" and "vulnerable nuclear material" within four years. But He was more vocal to declare that as long as a nuclear threat existed, the US would retain its nuclear capability. Obama is also asking funding for the US weapons program. In February 2010, it asked for $80 billion over 10 years, a 15 percent increase over the Bush administration, for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the US weapons complex. It is nothing but retelling the same story again and again. Despite a general trend toward disarmament in the early 1990s, Bush administration repeatedly pushed to fund policies such as 'Reliable Replacement Warhead Program', 'Complex Transformation' and 'Nuclear Bunker Buster' for a so called 'new generation of nukes' smaller, easier to maintain but complex and can restore the ability to produce "pits", the fissile cores of the primaries of US thermonuclear weapons and can even penetrate into soil and rock in order to destroy underground targets. The most fundamental question in this regard implies whether nuclear disarmament is desirable even if it is possible. A world without nukes could be far more unstable and prone to both smaller and global-scale conventional wars. A nuclear free world will not only crack the regional strategic balance particularly in South Asia, Middle East and East Asia, but also render a global picture that looks startlingly familiar to pre-World War I Europe. The development of 'The Bomb' and its presence as an ultimate deterrent has arguably preempted the advent of global-scale wars since its first and final use in WW II. Tension between the United States and Russia, but there is a limit to how far each nation is willing to provoke the other. The same can be said for the US relationship with China. Global zero will do more to spread than contain nuclear weapons -- directly, by encouraging some non-nuclear states to consider developing nuclear weapons, and indirectly, by displacing and undermining other more effective strategies. Friends and allies of the US including Germany, Japan, and South Korea who are quite capable but have not sought nuclear weapons may decide that they must acquire their own bomb, if the US is seen to be heading toward eliminating its nuclear capabilities, because it will destroy US ability to extend the protection of nuclear deterrent to cover them. During disarmament process, nations would become distrustful of the others even to the point of complete paranoia and all-out belligerence and any evidence to the contrary could severely escalate tension and thwart the process itself and could lead to even nuclear war. Besides, concealing a few nukes and attempting to gain political and military advantages by nuclear blackmail or attack could give one nation an enormous military advantage over those nations who have been completely de-nuclearised. And importantly, nukes could still get in the wrong hands such as fringe groups, and rogue nations enabling them to take the rest of the world hostage. However, the ideal projection of the world makes little sense, since the struggle for power and supremacy underlies the objectivity of international competition. It's not a question of opposing nuclear disarmament, rather reckoning the possibilities and consequences afterwards. We do have nuclear weapons in the world and now it is an inseparable part of it, given that the systemic preservation of the world politics is highly dependent on the maintenance of the nuclear weapons. It seems as a devil's advocacy for nuclear weapons, but the effect that this dream would bring speaks otherwise.
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