Op-ed: Nuclear disarmament after Iraq

M V Ramana

Nuclear weapons would not necessarily have protected Iraq. Deterrence is not an objective property of a weapon or a weapon system

Since the US invasion of Iraq, some have argued that in a world dominated by the US the only protection against US aggression is the possession of nuclear weapons. Closely related is the claim that if Iraq had nuclear weapons then the US would not have dared an invasion. As proof, they offer the differential treatment meted out to North Korea that is then attributed to its present or imminent possession of nuclear weapons. None of these claims are tenable; the task of global nuclear disarmament remains urgent and central to opposing US imperialism.

Let us first examine the US decision to invade Iraq while not doing the same (at least so far) with North Korea. Except for those who swallow US government propaganda uncritically, it should be clear that the real motivations for the invasion of Iraq had practically nothing to do with Iraq’s purported possession or pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Therefore the argument that since both Iraq and North Korea have WMD capabilities, the US should invade North Korea is disingenuous.

The difference in US treatment of the two countries has more to do with material and geo-strategic differences in the two countries. Most important among these is Iraq’s oil reserves, and oil is arguably the most coveted natural resource today. A related fact is that Iraq is located in a very sensitive geopolitical area, where US control has been problematic ever since the Iranian revolution. US planners are clearly concerned that what happens, or does not happen to Iraq, would serve as an example to its neighbours.

North Korea does not possess oil and, despite the current focus, is in a much quieter part of the globe. The US is the status quo power in East Asia given its close relationships with Japan and South Korea. Further, the East Asian powers themselves are more sanguine about North Korea’s nuclear capability and support diplomatic initiatives. There is also a strong movement in South Korea for reunification. So as such the US has no reason to invade North Korea.

It is also impossible to verify the claim that the US would not have invaded a nuclear-armed Iraq. One can only speculate as to how the US administration/military would have behaved if Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. Going by the brand of advice that US officials seem to be listening to, the US may well have proceeded with the invasion because the costs of inaction, within their narrow perspective, would have been too great. Political Scientist Barry Posen argued after the first Gulf War that the US should have prosecuted that war even if Iraq had some limited nuclear capability by explicitly warning of a certain and overwhelming nuclear response (meaning that Iraq would have been reduced to radioactive rubble) to any Iraqi nuclear use. This idea is supported by America’s waging of the first Gulf war despite Iraq’s chemical and biological arsenal.

It is therefore quite possible that the US may have attacked Iraq if the stakes, as its leaders perceive them, are worth it. Nuclear weapons would not necessarily have protected Iraq. Deterrence is not an objective property of a weapon or a weapon system. The same set of destructive capabilities in one case may inhibit an attack but not do so in another where the motivations of the attacker are different.

A similar unproven assertion heard often in India is that the US treats China differently only because of its nuclear capability. The burden of proof should fall upon those people who attribute such powers to nuclear weapons. Such a proof could take the form of, for example, evidence that a US president decided on some hostile action against China, say stationing short range tactical nuclear missiles in Taiwan, but then decided against it because some advisor warned him of a possible retaliatory Chinese nuclear attack against Washington. But no such instance is known.

In the most dramatic instance where China went against US interests, i.e. its intervention in the Korean war, it did so without nuclear weapons and in the face of US nuclear threats. Likewise the Vietnamese demonstrated, albeit at tremendous cost, that if the stakes are great enough, one could deny the US its ambitions despite American military might or nuclear warnings.

Against the hypothetical possibilities and wild speculations advanced by nuclear weapons apologists, one must weigh the likelihood of the enormous destruction wrought by nuclear weapons and the definite and huge economic, environmental and health costs that ensue from acquiring nuclear weapons. These costs are borne disproportionately by ordinary working people, not by the political and military elite.

Nuclear deterrence advocates would, of course, claim that the chances of nuclear destruction are nil. But as I have argued many times in this column, nuclear deterrence is not a law of nature and there are many possibilities for its failure. Its failure would leave the hypothetical nuclear armed country that faces the US, Iraq for example, with a situation where it has not the several thousand casualties that have been estimated from the present invasion but millions and millions of people that are dead or dying from nuclear weapons effects. And the possibility that some millions may be dead in Washington would, or should, provide no solace.

One must also remember that nuclear weapons are not created by waving a magic wand. The process of building them is a long one. It is during this process that, should US leaders decide that a certain country’s nuclear weapons capabilities are particularly intolerable, the Pentagon would launch attacks on nuclear facilities. This is the doctrine of pre-emption. Thus during the process of acquisition, the likelihood of US attacks and consequent insecurity grows exponentially.

All of this, however, does not answer the central question – how to deal with US imperialism and its military might. In order not to forestall creative possibilities, the answer must perforce take the form of exclusions rather than inclusions. Most important among the proscriptions is the temptation to compete with the US militarily. That is a doomed strategy; the collapse of the Soviet Union provides strong evidence of that.

The challenge to US imperialism must therefore come through political, diplomatic, economic and legal means. It cannot be an exclusionary, national strategy but an international one. It should work constructively with the social movements within the US that oppose the imperialists that run the government. Nuclear weapons have no place in this challenge.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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