The Hindu : The paradox of modern warfare

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 31, 2004

International

International

The paradox of modern warfare

By George Monbiot

LONDON, MARCH 30. The paradox of modern warfare works like this: by enhancing our military strength, we enhance our opponents' capacity to destroy us. The Russian state developed thermobaric bombs (which release a cloud of explosive material into the air) for use against Muslim guerillas. Now, according to New Scientist, Muslim terrorists are trying to copy them. The United States has been producing weaponised anthrax, ostensibly to anticipate terrorist threats. In 2001, anthrax stolen from this programme was used to terrorise America. The greatest horrors with which terrorists might threaten us are those whose development we funded.

Given that the most frightening of these technologies is nuclear weaponry, and given that the possibility that terrorists might acquire them becomes more real as the list of nuclear powers lengthens, we should be grateful to Mr. Blair for encouraging disarmament in Libya. Though Libya's programme was less advanced than we were led to believe (its ``4,000 uranium centrifuges'' turned out to be merely centrifuge casings), and though Mr. Blair's enthusiasm was doubtless sharpened by the opportunities Libya offers to British corporations, we should not permit our reasonable cynicism to obscure the fact that, for just the second time in history, a state has voluntarily renounced its nuclear technologies. Libya, unlike India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea or Iran, is now abiding by the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

But amid all the backslapping last week, something was forgotten. This is that the treaty which Qadhafi has honoured was a two-way deal. Those states which did not possess nuclear weapons would not seek to acquire them. In return, the states which already possessed them — the US, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom — would ``pursue negotiations in good faith ... on general and complete disarmament''. Libya is now in conformity with international law. The United Kingdom is not.

At the end of next month, British officials will be travelling to New York for a meeting about the five-yearly review of the treaty. It is hard to see what their negotiating position will be. For they have precious little evidence of ``good faith'' to show.

It is true that, since the end of the cold war, the U.K.'s total nuclear explosive power has been reduced by 70 per cent. But that appears to be as low as the Government will ever permit it to go. The defence white paper, published in December, notes: ``Decisions on whether to replace Trident (missiles) are not needed this Parliament, but are likely to be required in the next one. We will therefore ... ensure that the range of options for maintaining a nuclear deterrent capability is kept open.'' Trident stays until it reaches the end of its natural life, whatever the rest of the world may offer. And then? Nothing this Government has said or done suggests that it would consider decommissioning those warheads without replacing them.

To this sin of omission we must add three of commission. The first is the U.K.'s support for the U.S. nuclear missile defence programme, which could scarcely be better calculated to provoke a new arms race. This month the Fylingdales radar station in the north of England is being upgraded to accommodate it.

The second is that the U.K. Government has laid out £2 billions to equip the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, west of London, with the means to design and build a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons. In this respect, as in all others, the U.K. appears to be keeping the U.S. company. Earlier this month, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration released its budget documents for research into the ``robust nuclear earth penetrator'', a first-strike bunker-busting bomb . The U.S. Government had claimed that all it wanted to do was to conduct a feasibility study. But, the new documents show, it has now budgeted to design, test and start producing it by 2009.

The third is that British policy on the deployment of nuclear weapons has changed. In March 2002, for the first time in British history, the Government suggested that the U.K. might use them before they are used against us. Power, the new British doctrine appears to assert, grows out of the payload of a bomb.

This may once have been true, when the enemies were states which had everything to lose by starting a nuclear war. But when your enemies are suicide bombers, and when they have no direct connection to a nation state, mutually assured destruction ceases to be a useful threat. Your intransigence merely encourages proliferation elsewhere, and so enhances the possibility that nuclear material will fall into the hands of terrorists. The more we assert our strength, the more vulnerable we become. —

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