Posted on 05/05/2005 4:17:53 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The plea heard from the conference floor, from nation after nation, seems simple: Since we don't have nuclear weapons, please guarantee you won't use yours on us.
It's the U.S. response - no - that isn't so simple, entangled as it is in the secret plans and dark visions of nuclear strategists.
Demands for a treaty enshrining such guarantees are a major issue before the U.N. conference that opened this week to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1970 pact by which more than 180 nations renounce atomic bombs forever in exchange for a pledge by five nuclear powers to eventually get rid of theirs.
Many disarmament experts believe the treaty negotiators of the 1960s erred by not embedding such "negative security assurances" - against nuclear attacks on non-nuclear states - in the original treaty, making the guarantees binding under international law.
The world's vulnerable have been trying to catch up ever since.
At conference after conference, scores of governments, from Switzerland to South Korea, have called for a treaty on "NSAs." Before the current conference, its Brazilian president, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, made his own appeal for action on the issue in 2005.
Such legally binding assurances "would go a long way to reduce incentives for proliferation," he said.
As if to underscore that point, the Iranians, accused by Washington of being "proliferators" bent on building nuclear weapons, took to the conference floor to say security assurances from the nuclear powers, including their American adversary, would help keep others from reaching for the bomb.
Iran's foreign minister called for action now. It "needs to be materialized in this conference," Kamal Kharrazi told the delegates.
In fact, action was supposed to be taken now. The last Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review, in 2000, decided by consensus that experts should develop recommendations for "NSAs" to be considered at the 2005 conference. But because of later opposition by three nuclear powers - the United States, Britain and France - no recommendations were made.
Why?
"Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have taken the position that that would be a bad idea," chief U.S. delegate Stephen G. Rademaker said of the treaty idea in an interview.
Over the years, U.S. officials have laid out a key rationale: The United States wants to retain the right to use nuclear weapons against a country, even a non-nuclear one, that attacks it with chemical or biological weapons. Proposals for a U.S. nuclear "bunker buster" bomb, for instance, focus on such a target, an underground chemical-biological arsenal.
A growing terrorist threat, including a chemical-biological threat, makes the American position even more necessary, said U.S. delegation spokesman Richard Grenell. "We want to be creative with the tools we have at our disposal," he said.
Not all nuclear powers agree. The Russians say they're willing to negotiate on NSAs, and China, which favors total nuclear disarmament, sees negative security assurances as a valuable interim measure. In fact, the Chinese submitted a paper to the conference on Wednesday calling for negotiation of an NSA treaty "without delay."
In 1995, all five recognized nuclear powers under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty declared in the U.N. Security Council that they would not turn their nuclear weapons on nonweapons states. The statements don't carry treaty-like legal obligations, however, and U.S. and British statements have since weakened the 1995 position.
But now lesser powers are finding another way to build a shield against a nuclear threat: the "nuclear weapons-free zones" coming into force over large swaths of the globe.
These treaties commit a region's states to keeping nuclear arms out, and come with legally binding protocols attached, by which big powers also agree to view these zones as off-limits to their nuclear weapons.
Three "nuke-free" zones are in force - covering Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia - and two are pending, in Africa and Central Asia. If all were in effect, and all weapons states ratified the protocols, more than half the world's nations would have "backdoor" security assurances.
But the United States refuses to ratify the South Pacific and Southeast Asia protocols, which would keep the Navy and other U.S. forces from crisscrossing much of the globe with nuclear weapons aboard.
An American aversion to such international agreements is growing stronger, said arms-control scholar Leonard S. Spector, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
"It's the cautious approach of the Bush administration," he said. "They don't want to accept any restriction on American flexibility."
Since we don't have nuclear weapons, please guarantee you won't use yours on us.
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Well at least these loser nations (most of them) get the idea that they might be in trouble if they attack the United States OR one of our key allies!!
My response: ** GOOD **
To the loser countries that made this plea. We WILL use them if we have to, such as if you use chemical, biological, genetic, radiological or nuclear weapons against us.
/bio-illogical
Long Live Kellogg-Briand !!!!!!!!!!!!
I think these sentences in the article needed correction.
-PJ
Boy that’s some shield. I am sure that ICBMs will be deterred from entering such a free zone. What world do these people live in?
What a golden opportunity!
Of course, all these countries know that the US would not use a nuke on them in the pre-911 world. Or we would have already.
What they are saying is, "we have devised a way to use surrogate killers in our place to kill and murder thousands of Americans. But it's not us. We can't help what they do".
(We just educate them, indoctrinate them, fill them with hate, arm them, finance them, offer infrastructure and support) but its not us. They don't wear uniforms, so you can't find us.
That's OK isn't it?
The answer? NO!
I may not live to see it, but the problem of mass murders will persist until we promise, and actually deliver, one nuke per capital of every member of the muslim brotherhood supporting continued international terrorism.
For each terrorist event.
Want to see how quickly all those terrorist cells can be found and destroyed?
I strongly agree that the negotiators erred in the 60s, but not for the reasons the murdering animals would like to suggest.
I would have insisted that any asymmetric attacks by surrogate out-of-uniform killers would render any promises null and void. In their entirety.
If only the bad guys have nukes, then. . . .
If only the good guys have nukes, then. . . .
Never mind. It doesn't work here.
We don't cut deals with terrorists.
Well if they ATTACK the US or one of our allies, all bets are off anyway!! Keep it the way it is! Let them sweat!
The Nuclear Non Poliferation Treaty is like the Geneva Convention: Just about every other country except our own ignores it. While we reduce our nuclear stockpile China building up theirs and handing the stuff off to countries like Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and so on. FranSS gave Iraq is nuclear reactor for Saddam's nculear program. Russia is very complacent and backs Iran.
Correct.
Do you realize that you have just identified the craziness of the proposal?
Who is "they" and "them"?
The muslims are assuming that we will dumbly buy into the notion that if the terrorists are not wearing national uniforms, we can not fight back against any country.
Pretty delusional logic.
Foolish people think a "protocol" will protect them.
" I bring you peace, peace in our time.(waving protocol
over head)"
One notes that it's the communist states that want to
get US to agree to this.
I ain't buying.
Until we decide to use nukes.
How's that for a promise?
:-P
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