Get a Grip on Nukes

By JASON SIBERT

The contemporary international political scene is filled with disorder. The Donald Trump administration has made it a point to cancel treaties and act as if our country isn’t a lawmaker, despite examples of our country working to establish international law in the past. Nationalistic leaders in other countries are contributing to the weakening of international law as well.

What is the meaning of law? Law connects a group of people to a vision of the greater good. If laws aren’t followed to a certain degree, then the vision of society promoted by the law breaks down. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s, our country and Soviet Russia — still engaged in Cold War competition – started setting limits on nuclear weapons via international law. There were still plenty of destructive nuclear weapons in the world, but we managed to control the arsenals somewhat.

The rise of a belligerent, right-wing populism around the world in places as diverse as the United States, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and other counties is threatening the control of the nuclear arsenals. Turkey’s leader, Recep Erdogan – a right-wing populist leader — recently told the world that his country was considering building nuclear weapons. He pointed out that the countries that signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had not kept their promise to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. The US abandonment of the ABM Treaty (by George W. Bush) and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (by Donald Trump) go against the spirit of the NPT and acted as a stopping point to the progress made on nuclear arms control. President Barack Obama’s modernization of the nuclear arsenal, continued by Trump, also worked against the spirit of the treaty.

When the NPT was signed, countries without nuclear weapons, like Turkey, agreed not to develop nuclear weapons while the countries with the largest nuclear arsenals – Russia, China, France, Great Britain, and the United States – keep theirs. The geopolitical tensions between our country and China and Russia, who are aligned in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization along with Turkey, are spilling over into the nuclear sphere. As Russia and China play a balancing act with the United States, it’s becoming harder to cut arms control deals. This balancing also makes it harder for the main nuclear powers to set an example for smaller powers.

The problems with NPT didn’t start with Trump. There was the Jimmy Carter administration’s ignoring of a nuclear test by Israel in 1979, which violated the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed by our country and Israel during the John Kennedy administration. The NTBT prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons everywhere with the exception of below ground. In addition, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India have abandoned NPT.

There is an alternative path. Our country can rejoin the ABM Treaty and make Russia’s medium range missiles unnecessary, as stated by writer Conn Hallinan in his story “Nuclear Lies and Broken Promises” Nov. 25 in CounterPunch. We could reduce tensions with China by withdrawing our ABM systems from Japan and South Korea. Hallinan also recommends that we rejoin the INF Treaty and invite China, India and Pakistan into it. Along the same line, we could reduce our forces in Asia and in exchange for China backing off claims to the South China Sea. Tensions between India and Pakistan could be reduced by supporting the United Nations pledge to hold a referendum in Kashmir.

The US. should also stay in the New Start Treaty, a 2011 Barack Obama administration treaty between the US and Russia that cut the number of strategic missile launchers of the two countries in half. Trump stated he might let it expire in 2021. We could also halt the modernization of our nuclear forces as suggested by Hallinan.

Our country desperately needs a plan to control the nuclear arsenals of the world. We need law and order, a phrased used by Trump in his 2016 campaign. Can we build that law? Or will a rising nationalism win?

Jason Sibert worked for the Suburban Journals in the St. Louis area for over a decade and is currently executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2020

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