January 13, 2006
A
New Nuclear Era Is at Hand
By Richard
Halloran
North Korea
and Iran have repeatedly given every evidence that they are going
forward with plans to produce nuclear weapons despite pressure
and cajoling from Europe and America not to do so.
Consequently,
a new nuclear era is at hand as other nations will likely be spurred
by North Korea and Iran to go nuclear themselves. Said a retired
U.S. military officer with experience in nuclear weapons: "We
need to start thinking about how we will live in a world where
non-proliferation has failed."
That will
require a new doctrine to deter nuclear hostilities so awful that,
as former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown once wrote, "The
living would envy the dead." The doctrine of mutual assured
destruction, or MAD, that kept the United States and the Soviet
Union from waging nuclear war will no longer do.
Amid this
gloom are rays of light. Several nations, including Argentina,
Brazil, and South Africa, have given up nuclear arms. Mongolia
and Japan have forsworn them. Proposals for nuclear free zones
in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific struggle for
life.
Mongolia
has declared itself to be nuclear-free and persuaded its nuclear
neighbors, China and Russia, to agree to respect that. This demonstrates,
said Mongolia’s former ambassador to the United Nations,
Enkhsaikhan Jargalsaikhan, "that each state can make its
unique contribution to non-proliferation."
Even though
many Japanese perceive nuclear threats from China and North Korea,
the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has stuck to
a long-standing policy of abstaining from nuclear arms. Japanese
strategists say that policy will continue so long as the U.S.
deterrent protecting Japan remains credible.
From North
Korea, the latest sign of its intent was carried by the Korean
Central News Agency: "Under the present situation it is illogical
to discuss with the U.S., the assailant, the issue of dismantling
the nuclear deterrent built up by the DPRK for self defense."
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the nation’s
formal name.
In Tehran,
a government spokesman, Gholam Hossein Elham, told correspondents
that "Iran will today resume nuclear fuel research as scheduled,"
defying pleas from Europe and America to postpone that decision.
"Very, very disastrous signals," said the German foreign
minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The White House echoed that.
Elsewhere
in Asia and the Middle East, nations that might develop nuclear
arms include South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Egypt.
India and
Pakistan are already declared nuclear powers while Israel’s
nuclear arsenal is an open secret. The other five are the United
States, Russia, Britain, France, and China.
Deterring
North Korea or Iran would be far different from the MAD standoff
at the depth of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet
Union deterred each other with massive nuclear arsenals that made
devastating retaliation a certain response to nuclear attack.
Today, North
Korea and Iran, with their relatively puny stocks of nuclear weapons,
cannot attack the United States with sufficient force to prevent
a retaliatory strike. Therefore, some American strategic thinkers
argue, negotiations with North Korea and Iran, with their empty
warnings of serious consequences, are futile and should cease.
"Blustering
does not become a superpower," says a U.S. military officer.
"We have gone from speaking softly while carrying a big stick
to blustering constantly while carrying no stick at all."
Instead
of bluster, Pyongyang and Teheran would be told, diplomatically
in public and forcefully in private, that a nuclear threat to
the United States, its deployed forces, and its allies would draw
a withering response at a time, place, and means of U.S. choosing.
Also advocated are sanctions but not military invasion.
Deterring
terrorists who had acquired nuclear bombs would be harder because
finding a clearly defined target would be difficult. Terrorists
could obtain nuclear bombs by stealing them from Russia, where
safeguards have become lax, or by making several themselves as
the technology becomes more available by the day.
Terrorists
could bring those weapons into the United States, says a study
by the Congressional Research Service: "Terrorists might
smuggle a weapon across lightly-guarded stretches of borders,
ship it in using a cargo container, place it in a crude oil tanker,
or bring it in using a truck, a boat, or a small airplane."
In response,
the CRS says, the U.S. relies on a "layered defense."
The layers include helping the Russians to control access to their
nuclear arsenal, safeguarding all enriched uranium sources, inspecting
ship containers, and enforcing greater U.S. border security.
At best,
however, that layered defense is leaky.
Richard Halloran, formerly
with The New York Times as a foreign correspondent in Asia and
military correspondent in Washington, writes from Honolulu. He
can be reached at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com
