By Jim Geraghty
Friday, October 11, 2024
This morning, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
to the Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots movement of atomic-bomb survivors
from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of
nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear
weapons must never be used again.” In its prize announcement, the Nobel
committee emphasizes “one encouraging fact”:
No nuclear weapon has been used in
war in nearly 80 years. The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other
representatives of the Hibakusha [the survivors] have contributed greatly to
the establishment of the nuclear taboo. It is therefore alarming that today
this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.
Just about everyone agrees with the argument that nuclear
weapons must never be used again. The question — with the planet and human
civilization hanging in the balance — is how you achieve that goal.
When I was growing up, just five countries had
(acknowledged) nuclear weapons: the U.S., the Soviet Union, Great Britain,
France, and China. Israel has never confirmed or denied the existence of its
nuclear weapons, although every now and then some retired official will slip up
and allude to the country’s possession of them.
India revealed it had a nuclear-weapons program in May
1998, and Pakistan revealed its own program a few weeks later. A. Q. Khan,
widely called the “father of Pakistan’s nuclear program,” decided to have a
bastard child of a nuclear program over in North Korea and put a lifetime’s worth of effort into attempting to further
nuclear-weapons programs in Pyongyang, as well as in Iran and Libya. He was
eventually caught, but the damage was already done:
An international effort led by
British and American intelligence agencies uncovered parts of the Khan network
at the start of the 2000s. It discovered a global web of scientists, front companies and factories that
it believed had transferred weapons technology to Iran, Libya, South Africa and
North Korea.
The great fear was that a terrorist
organization such as Al Qaeda would buy or steal the makings of a nuclear
weapon.
Mr. Tenet wrote that he confronted
Mr. Musharraf in a New York hotel suite on Sept. 24, 2003, during a meeting of
the United Nations General Assembly.
“A.Q. Khan is betraying your
country,” Mr. Tenet said he told the Pakistani leader. “He has stolen some of
your nation’s most sensitive secrets and sold them to the highest bidders.” In
his own memoir, Mr. Musharraf called this moment a profound embarrassment.
On Jan. 31, 2004, the government of
Pakistan dismissed Dr. Khan. Shortly thereafter it announced that he had
admitted helping the nuclear-weapons programs of Iran, North Korea and Libya.
He confessed on national television four days later, saying his work was that
of a rogue scientist and that his government never approved the sales or
transfers of weapons technologies. The explanation was not widely accepted
outside Pakistan.
If you put together a list of people who have made the
world a more dangerous place since the end of the Cold War, Khan would be right
up there alongside more familiar ones like Osama bin Laden, Qasem Soleimani,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Vladimir Putin. It’s enough to make you
shout his name in anger.
The past generation’s efforts at nuclear nonproliferation
have largely failed, at least when it mattered the most. No one would feel all
that threatened by a Belgian nuclear-weapons program, or a Canadian one. The disarmament of Libya’s nuclear program counts as a genuine
victory, and it is hard to believe the argument that Colonel Moammar Qaddafi’s
decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with his
having watched a U.S.-led coalition topple Saddam Hussein’s regime because the
West believed the Iraqi leader had WMDs. Nah, you’re right, fellas, I’m sure
the timing of Qaddafi’s 180-degree turn was entirely coincidental. (Qaddafi spent his life raging against “Yankee imperialism,”
but in the end, the Yankees got him anyway.)
But today, North Korea has an estimated 50 nuclear weapons, and Iran’s nuclear program
has reached the point at which, “within about one week, Iran might be able to enrich enough
uranium for five fission weapons.”
Only one country in world history has ever given up its
nuclear arsenal: Ukraine. This was the result of a long and arduous process after the Cold War:
To solidify security commitments to
Ukraine, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest
Memorandum on Security Assurances on December 5, 1994. A political agreement in
accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Accords, the memorandum
included security assurances against the threat or use of force against
Ukraine’s territory or political independence. The countries promised to
respect the sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine. . . .
Russia and the United States
released a joint statement in 2009 confirming that the security assurances made
in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum would still be valid after START expired in
2009. [Emphasis added.]
You can see how that turned out for the Ukrainians.
We don’t have any fantasy or science-fiction device that
allows us to see into alternate timelines. But it is reasonable to conclude
that if Ukraine had retained its nuclear weapons, Russia would have been much
less likely to attempt an annexation of Crimea in 2014 or a full-scale invasion
in 2022.
If Taiwan or South Korea had a nuke or two — or a couple
dozen — the calculations for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or a North Korean
invasion of or war against South Korea would become much more complicated.
South Korea is considered to be under the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” of
protection; Taiwan is not.
Taiwan nearly had a nuclear bomb. Back in the late 1980s,
the island nation was allegedly one to two years away from developing a bomb
when the U.S. scored a key defection: Chang Hsien-yi, deputy director at
Taiwan’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, who had earlier been recruited
by the CIA. Washington deemed a Taiwanese nuclear-weapons program too
destabilizing and provocative to Beijing, and the resulting pressure from the
U.S. government led Taiwan to shut it down.
Anyone who genuinely argues that unilateral nuclear
disarmament will lead to a more peaceful world is operating with a geopolitical
worldview akin to that of the Care Bears or My Little Pony.
The Nobel committee laments:
The nuclear powers are modernizing
and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire
nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing
warfare. At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what
nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.
Modernizing a national nuclear arsenal is not necessarily
a bad thing and, in the current threat environment, is almost certainly a
necessity for the United States. If Russia and China have the nuclear-weapon
equivalent of the latest smartphone, and the U.S. has the nuclear-weapon
equivalent of rotary-dial landlines, do you think that makes conflict more
likely or less likely? What have we learned about what autocratic
regimes do when they think they have a strategic advantage over a weaker foe?
In October 2023, the bipartisan U.S. Strategic Posture Commission released its
comprehensive study of U.S. nuclear forces, the nation’s nuclear-armed
foes, and geopolitical strategy. The commission recommended
fully and urgently executing the
U.S. nuclear modernization Program of Record, . . . which includes replacement
of all U.S. nuclear delivery systems, modernization of their warheads,
comprehensive modernization of U.S. nuclear command, control, and communications,
and recapitalizing the nuclear enterprise infrastructure at the DOD [Department
of Defense] and DOE/NNSA [Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security
Administration].
The commission also noted that “the vision of a world
without nuclear weapons, aspirational even in 2009, is more improbable now than
ever. The new global environment is fundamentally different than anything
experienced in the past, even in the darkest days of the Cold War.”
Note the Nobel committee’s lament: “New countries appear
to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons.” Well, again, the big question is
what people are willing to do about it. In the list of nuclear-armed states
above, you notice Iraq isn’t included. In 1981, the Israeli Air Force launched a strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak.
It was a controversial decision; U.N. Secretary-General
Kurt Waldheim of Austria denounced the Osirak attack as a “clear contravention
of international law.” The world later learned this was not the first time Kurt Waldheim had
been hostile to a bunch of Jews.
The current president does not want a rerun of the Osirak
attack, this time on Iranian soil:
President Joe Biden said Wednesday
he will not support an Israeli strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear
program in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel.
“The answer is no,” Biden told
reporters when asked if he would support such retaliation after Iran fired
about 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday.
If you want a hostile, autocratic, aggressive,
unpredictable regime to not have nuclear weapons, somebody’s got to do
something about it, and it’s gonna require, at minimum, secret computer-virus programs and the occasional remote-control machine gun meeting up with nuclear scientists.
These nuclear-weapon development programs aren’t going to
stop themselves. Sanctions are not sufficient to prevent nuclear proliferation.
While conducting research for my next novel, I’ve run across a lot of reports, accounts, and studies indicating that our sanctions regimes against rogue
states are leaky as a sieve. There are just too many avenues through which to
move money, weapons, oil, sensitive technology, and anything else without
authorities noticing.
Our sanctions on nuclear technology may hinder or
frustrate regimes that want to build a nuclear arsenal, but they don’t halt the
progress. They just make the task more complicated.
Telling the world about the devastation caused by the
atomic bombs dropped on Japan, as Nihon Hidankyo does, is a good thing, but
that doesn’t mean it’s a sufficient deterrent. If you want a world where no one
ever uses a nuclear weapon in conflict, you must keep nuclear weapons out of
the hands of the dangerous men who are reckless enough to contemplate using
them.
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