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http://www.iht.com/articles/539521.htm
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How Bush and Kerry see a world of nuclear dangers
NYT NYT
Monday, September 20, 2004
The cold war generation grew up worrying about the bomb, the Russians
and World War III. Today's nuclear nightmares are more varied but no
less scary. The list of nuclear-armed states is lengthening
alarmingly, and nuclear terrorism has emerged as a terrifying threat.
Russia has huge, poorly guarded stockpiles of nuclear bomb fuel and
there is a small but increasing possibility that its decaying early
warning system could trigger an accidental launch.
President George W. Bush often says he means to halt the nuclear arms
programs of North Korea and Iran, although he has yet to produce any
workable plans for doing so. In February, he rightly called for
tighter controls over nuclear fuel processing, used by several
countries to produce bomb ingredients.
As a senator and a candidate, John Kerry has offered constructive
proposals addressing almost every aspect of current nuclear dangers.
While Bush has tended to focus narrowly on rogue states like North
Korea and Iran, Kerry wisely favors a more comprehensive approach that
would combine crisis diplomacy on these two priority cases with
accelerated efforts to protect Russian stockpiles. The North Korean
and Iranian nuclear programs are at the top of America's agenda. But
it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that 95 percent of the nuclear
bombs and most of the nuclear weapons fuel are in the hands of Russia
and the United States.
Kerry would also break with Bush policies that unintentionally
encourage nuclear proliferation, like the Strangelovian plans for
research on unneeded new nuclear weapons.
In the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and the Korean Peninsula,
an escalation of conventional conflict into nuclear war has to be
treated as a realistic possibility.
The steady spread of these weapons also increases the risks of
backdoor sales of nuclear technology, as the worldwide arms bazaar run
by Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan so chillingly demonstrated. This
creeping proliferation has meant the dispersal of nuclear bomb
ingredients like highly enriched uranium and plutonium into countries
with poor governance, uncertain stability and corrupt officials. That
makes it easier for terrorists to acquire such material and try to
fashion usable nuclear bombs. North Korea and Iran were undoubtedly
taught by the Iraq experience that the best protection against a
pre-emptive strike is a nuclear arsenal. In both cases, precious time
has been lost while the administration has followed largely
unproductive diplomatic strategies. Bush now wants to ask the United
Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran. But many council
members, including major European allies, are not ready to do so. On
North Korea, the administration has insisted that discussions with
North Korea also include Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. These
have made no discernible progress, in part because Washington waited
until this summer to put its first serious negotiating proposal on the
table. With the talks stalled, North Korea has all the time it needs
to reprocess its plutonium into several nuclear bombs.
Kerry would try to jump-start the North Korea talks with a
comprehensive new U.S. proposal. He would, like Bush, insist that Iran
renounce all domestic processing of nuclear fuel while promising that
it could count on access to reliable imported supplies of civilian
reactor fuel in return. Any distinction between the two candidates on
Iran rests on Kerry's contention that he could better line up European
support.
If there is still time to dissuade these two countries from going
nuclear, there isn't much. North Korea may already have assembled test
devices. Iran may soon have all the technology and raw materials
needed to proceed. Still, the international community should explore
every avenue to persuade both countries that it is not in their best
interest to build nuclear weapons. In exchange for a verifiable
dismantling of their nuclear programs, Washington and other
governments ought to be willing to offer substantial economic,
diplomatic and security concessions. If that fails to produce results,
international pressure will have to be substantially ratcheted up.
Further months of stalemate while nuclear fuel processing work
continues is not an acceptable option. Every nuclear wannabe has now
learned how to disguise the early phases of a nuclear weapons effort
as part of a civilian nuclear energy program, a trick most recently
employed by Iran. Unfortunately, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
was explicitly intended to encourage such power programs. Obviously,
the treaty needs to be toughened.
Bush has rightly called on other countries to deny nuclear-related
exports to any nation that refuses to forgo such fuel processing
plants. He should accelerate the process by calling on the four other
main nuclear exporting countries to join Washington in an immediate
ban.
It is also vital to extend the reach of the nonproliferation treaty
with a proposed new fissile materials agreement. Kerry strongly
supports this and Bush says he supports it too, but his administration
recently undermined the treaty talks by announcing, perversely, that
Washington would insist that the agreement contain no provisions for
verification or inspections.
Although the United States and Russia have deactivated thousands of
nuclear warheads since the end of the cold war, tens of thousands
remain activated or sitting in stockpiles where they can be quickly
reassembled. The arms reduction agreement signed by Bush and President
Vladimir Putin in 2002 calls for most of these warheads to be
deactivated by 2012, but no reductions are required sooner than that
and many of the deactivated warheads will still be retained in
stockpiles. America's stored and deactivated weapons are well secured,
but many of Russia's are not. In addition, Russia's launch command and
early warning systems may be dangerously degrading. At some point,
they might conceivably become vulnerable to terrorists. Well over a
thousand warheads on each side remain on hair-trigger alert.
Washington is helping Russia upgrade its storage security, but at such
a slow rate that hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium and
plutonium will be lying around for many years. Every ton of highly
enriched uranium can be used to make more than 100 nuclear bombs. A
ton of plutonium can go even further.
The answer is to sharply increase funding for the broad range of U.S.
programs intended to secure this material and reduce or eliminate
other threats from cold war weapons. This is the most cost-effective
defense spending in the federal budget. A bipartisan commission in
2001 recommended tripling spending for these programs, but the Bush
administration has failed to follow through. Kerry proposes a
significant increase aimed at securing all of Russia's loose bomb fuel
in four years.
While Bush and Kerry seem to agree on many nuclear proliferation
issues, the difference lies in their approach to international
problems. Voters will have to decide whether Kerry's emphasis on
diplomacy and international cooperation is the best way to keep a lid
on these nuclear threats, or whether Bush's more unilateral approach
to foreign affairs is better. There is no graver subject for their
consideration this election year.
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