Missing the Point
by Clay Risen

Call it the irony of the New World Economy. While Washington suffered under the angst of some 30,000 anti-World Bank protesters, and while government agents and anti-Castro Cubans went head-to-head over a six-year old boy, over 100 delegates from around the world gathered in New York to discuss the re-ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — with hardly an activist in sight.

Granted, venting your anger over sweatshops and the environment is a lot cooler (not to mention easier) than delving into the arcane world of nuclear arms control. But the reasons for concern are clear: Since the last NPT ratification meeting in 1995, India and Pakistan have not only become nuclear powers, but have gone to the brink of nuclear war and back. Other nations, flush with the riches of the global economic boom, are eager to join the nuclear club. And just when the world is looking up to the United States to show that disarmament is a worthwhile goal, we are doing several things to undermine the very message we need to be sending.

For one thing, the United States has steadfastly refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, one of the few countries not to do so (Senate Republicans, under pressure from Jesse Helms rejected it last fall). Not only is the CTBT a major piece of the global arms control pie, but it also signals the world that we are still committed to staying on the cutting-edge of global destruction.

Second, the United States is dangerously close to violating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed with the Soviet Union in 1972 and intended to prevent either country from developing defenses against nuclear attacks. Helms & Co. are pushing for the construction of a massive "Star Wars" defense system, arguing that the need to check attacks by nuclear "rogue" states outweigh our commitment to the treaty. Unfortunately, Helms and others fail to see that violating the promise of the ABM Treaty, especially in light of our other arms control shortcomings, would mean saying bye-bye to our reputation and influence in global arms control.

Third, the United States has begun a program to update its arsenal of W-76 nuclear warheads — the same warheads that treaties like START II (recently ratified by the Russian parliament) seek to eliminate. The warheads will be retrofitted with so-called "bunker-busting" capabilities, making them "battle-ready" for another few decades. Although this last effort has received little domestic press, it is sure to have an enormous negative effect on our image abroad — after all, who trusts the bully who tells you to put down your stick just as he is sharpening his own?

Why, you might ask, is the United States so committed to pooping on the current nuclear disarmament party? Some might say it's political — after all, there are a few very lucky, and very powerful, companies with the contracts to build weapons (General Electric, for example), and they are understandably loath to give them up. But the better explanation is simply this: the United States has yet to emerge from its mantle of Cold War logic. Nuclear weapons are a very nice, if somewhat messy, tool to have, and they automatically make us the Big Man on the World Campus. So instead of looking for ways to disarm, we have spent a lot of time looking for justifications to keep arming.

Take, for example, policymakers' fixation with "rogue" nations. Like script-writers for bad action movies, Washington's flock of security experts, analysts, and wonks decided if Russia was not going to provide the sort of nuclear threat that we saw from the Soviets, we would have to look elsewhere. Hence the creation of a short list of countries with closed doors and mass destruction on their minds: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. However, over the last decade Iraq and North Korea have sunk into dire economic squalor as a result of international sanctions, while Iran has slowly begun to democratize. Not exactly the sorts of baddies you'd find in your average Tom Clancy flick, but surprisingly they seem evil enough to justify wasting billions of dollars — and the country's reputation — on nuclear weapons.

In a few weeks, Bill Clinton will travel to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin, and according to the New York Times, it's expected that Clinton will propose a START III agreement. This is laudable, but it's just a piece of paper, and stands a snowball's chance of getting ratified by Congress during an election year. The CTBT has even less of a chance, and over the next nine months Clinton will be on the defensive, devoting most of his efforts to blocking Republicans from funding missile defense.

There are a few things, though, that Clinton can do without Congress. For one, he can introduce a policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons. Since the 1950s, the United States has reserved the right to use nukes first in the event of an overwhelming conventional defeat. But this strategy was designed for a land war in Europe, a scenario about as likely today as a Leonard Part 7.

Such a move would put pressure on India and Pakistan to do the same, significantly reducing the risk of nuclear conflict between two of the world's most populous nations.

Second, Clinton can take the country's nuclear arsenal off its present alert status. A few years ago, the United States and Russia agreed to point their weapons away from each other, but because the weapons remain on alert, a launch would be delayed by only a few minutes. Re-alerting a weapon, on the other hand, would take hours, and would signal that the United States is ready to move away from the brink.

Neither of these moves would be anything more than symbolic gestures. In the end, if we want to see a safer world, there must be serious, committed efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. This won't happen easily, and it may have to wait until the day when, ironically, nuclear weapons are sexy again.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.