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oting that the us had mercilessly bombed the north during the korean war since then the north koreans have constantly been in a kind of perpetual state of war surrounded by giant powers like russia and china it s also worth keeping in mind that the us had stationed hundreds of nuclear weapons in south korea as a deterrent until about 1990 although these actions by the us do not justify the north s nuclear efforts they do explain the paranoia and deep sense of insecurity that has fueled north korea s animosity towards the us again there are heroes in this story but one singled out by rhodes is former president jimmy carter who went to north korea of his own volition in 1994 and successfully mediated the koreans proposal to stop reprocessing in return for light water reactors the consequence of this diplomacy was the so called agreed framework to regulate north korea s commercial nuclear program which unfortunately broke down in 2003 in the face of north korean non compliance and disagreements since then north korea has always had to be kept on a tight leash and there have been several moments of tension between the two countries but rhodes s accounts make it clear how diplomacy has averted another korean war rhodes also has succinct discussions of efforts to develop and implement a framework for the ctbt which was signed by clinton but unfortunately not ratified by the senate the last part of the book concerns the run up to the second gulf war this story has been told before but rhodes tells it succinctly and well meticulous weapons inspections in iraq between 1992 and 1998 had unearthed no evidence of a wmd capability although iraq had also not furnished clear documentation of the dismantling of its wmd capability as rhodes tells it regime change had already been on the table especially pushed by neoconservatives like dick cheney and paul wolfowitz but even contemplated by former vice president al gore but even after 9 11 it does not seem like bush was thinking of attacking iraq however as the record indicates something changed in his thinking in the next two months and invading iraq became a concrete strategy in his mind rhodes thinks that a major reason for this shift in his thinking may have been the anthrax attacks which followed 9 11 it seems that these attacks really rammed the threat of terrorism home at one point alarms even went off in the white house and dick cheney suspected that he himself may have been contaminated nonetheless as is well known now bush and his associates decided to invade iraq fueled by the tried and tested strategy of threat inflation and on evidence that was dubious at best rhodes clearly establishes the prevarications of the administration s claims about wmds in iraq based on discredited reports about uranium shipments from niger to saddam reports discredited even by the cia as well as chinese imports of supposed aluminum tubes for centrifuges which turned out to be parts for short range rockets at best iraq was years behind the difficult goal of building a nuclear weapon a goal which would have needed extensive operations of enrichment and processing which would most likely have been detected no matter how you cut it there was no concrete justification for invading iraq except one based on ideology and belief bush also seriously damaged arms reduction efforts by withdrawing from the abm treaty by his belligerent rhetoric against north korea which withdrew from the npt and tested a nuclear weapon in 2006 and iran by lifting sanctions on pakistan a particularly recalcitrant and prolific proliferator and by agreeing to supply india which had not signed the npt with nuclear related equipment and yet in the midst of this tragedy it is easy to miss bush s one success in arms control in which he signed major arms reductions with russia these reductions brought down the number of warheads on us delivery vehicles from about 10 000 at the end of the cold war to about 2600 this brings us to the final eloquent part of rhodes s book where he talks about the possible abolishment of nuclear weapons he describes the very serious problem of nuclear terrorism in his view while it may be very difficult for terrorists to use a sophisticated nuclear weapon it may be much easier for them to acquire enough material for a crude explosive even state owned nuclear weapons are susceptible to accident miscalculation and misunderstanding the bottom line is that as long as nuclear weapons are around there is always a possibility that they may be used the only truly final solution for reducing the threat of nuclear weapons is to get rid of them how do we achieve this i would have appreciated more detail from rhodes in this regard but he describes promising developments for one thing simple laws of physics dictate that without nuclear material one cannot make nuclear weapons so securing nuclear material is key and the nunn lugar initiative has set a worthy bipartisan example for achieving this goal many recent initiatives to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons have also been refreshingly bipartisan efforts to ban nuclear testing have already been fine honed for decades and getting all nations on board the ctbt would mean a lot in this context rhodes singles out australian diplomat richard butler and his canberra commission for special praise the fact is that in spite of nuclear proliferation there have been hundreds of nations which have found it prudent not to develop nuclear weapons for various reasons not the least of which is their expense according to rhodes it costs the us 50 billion dollars just to maintain its current stockpile of weapons so there is hope in the end though only political will strong leadership and international cooperation can rid the world of these terrible weapons at some point owning a nuclear weapon needs to become a crime it is absolutely necessary to stop regarding these weapons as partisan parochial concerns which can be leveraged to score political points in elections to underscore this point rhodes recounts a fascinating idea put forth by the scottish writer gil elliot in his book twentieth century book of the dead elliot talks about the international efforts to prevent and cure infectious disease and believes that war should similarly be treated as an international anathema that is to be abolished efforts to eradicate disease through public health campaigns crossed boundaries and saw even countries who were otherwise very hostile towards each other mutually cooperating this was because disease was not seen as some other country s problem but as a common threat because of their sheer destructive power nuclear weapons similarly pose a common threat to all of humanity rhodes says that only when nuclear weapons are similarly and completely depoliticized to the extent that infectious diseases are only when the world sees them not as instruments of aggression and patriotism owned by specific nations but as a common scourge that threatens all of humanity irrespective of our political leanings and differences only then will we all work together to abolish them posted in uncategorized leave a comment shattering the nuclear sword august 15 2010 every man woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness the weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us john f kennedy speech to the un september 1961 countdown to zero is one of the best accounts of the dangers of nuclear weapons for the layman that i have recently seen the film which opened last week takes a comprehensive yet succinct look at the risks posed by nuclear weapons and is set against the backdrop of john f kennedy s speech to the united nations in which he quoted the words cited above jfk talked about a sword of damocles hanging on our head that is secured by a flimsy thread as the film emphasizes the most important operative words in kennedy s speech are accident miscalculation or madness which can all cut the thread holding the sword to illustrate how this could happen the film showcases interviews with leading arms control experts and policy personnel including former cia agent valerie plame harvard professor matthew bunn nuclear terrorism expert graham allison wmd expert joseph cirincione and world leaders like mikhail gorbachev and tony blair the fact is that no matter how responsible the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons may be and how well protected the weapons may seem the extremely complex nature of the system always increases the chances of miscalculation accident or madness the film gives concerning examples for instance a few years ago nuclear weapons instead of regular ones were loaded on a plane in north dakota and flown almost halfway around the country without anyone noticing it the cuban missile crisis is of course well known lesser known are the palomares incident and half a dozen others when nuclear weapons were accidentally dropped from mid air fortunately none detonated but the danger is pervasive and the film also recounts some chilling events the most heart stopping is an incident in 1995 recounted by cirincione when the russians mistook the flight of an experimental rocket from norway for a nuclear launch the codes were ready everyone in the russian hierarchy was convinced and all that remained to launch a nuclear strike against the us was president yeltsin s approval thankfully for the world yeltsin was not drunk and he did not trust the officials judgment enough leading to a narrow brush with catastrophe the problem is that the complex protocols embedded in the use of nuclear weapons allow much opportunity for misunderstandings and accidents and very little time for response and corrective action even a president would have typically no more than a few minutes to make a decision thus increasing the possibility of triggering armageddon the simplest and most ludicrous of causes can set off false alarms in one case the setting off of a nuclear alert was the result of a malfunction in a single computer chip costing less than a dollar one of the most jaw dropping instances i remember was from richard rhodes s book zbigniew brzezinski jimmy carter s national security advisor was woken up in the middle of the night and told that there were 1500 soviet nuclear missiles headed for the us as brzezinski was contemplating what to do next the caller called back and said that the number of missiles had been upgraded to 15000 hearing this brzezinski just sat on his bed there would be no point in alerting anyone of course it turned out to be computer malfunction apart from such misunderstandings the other reason why nuclear weapons pose such a great danger is of course because they may fall into the hands of terrorists and deterrence does not apply to such stateless actors al qaeda has been trying to get their hands on nukes for years what makes the situation worse is the relatively easy accessibility of enriched uranium in the former soviet union after the cold war ended many nuclear facilities in the former soviet republics found themselves orphaned severed from central control with their workers out of a job while many of the facilities were later secured with us cooperation many others were ludicrously insecure with barely a padlock preventing access to nuclear material in the words of a former soviet official potatoes were guarded better selling a few grams of uranium to potential buyers would allow impecunious laid off workers from these facilities to make a lucrative buck the film documents that there have been literally dozens of instances when former nuclear workers have been caught trying to smuggle a few grams of nuclear material across borders in russia and central asia in addition countries like iran north korea and pakistan are happy to trade nuclear related technology to wannabe buyers this nuclear material is notoriously hard to detect as the film says smuggling a few kilograms of enriched uranium by shielding it in a lead pipe is child s play this is mainly because the relatively weak radiation from uranium can be almost completely shielded by lead but also because this uranium could be hidden in any one of a whopping 100 000 shipping containers entering the us every single day finding a few kilos of u 235 in a heavily shielded lead casing in one of these countless containers is an unimaginably difficult problem to solve set the detectors on high and one would not detect the low intensity radiation set it on low and one would detect almost everything else including fruits papers and wood which emit comparable ambient levels of radiation if terrorists manage to get past the most difficult step of acquiring nuclear material they can easily build a crude nuclear bomb plus paraphrasing churchill terrorists don t have to do their best they just have to do enough exploding a crude bomb in the port itself would not be what they have in mind but it would still be enough to bring about chaos and panic possibly collapsing the financial and economic system of a country so what can be done to address this life threatening problem one of the biggest truisms about nuclear weapons which separates them from other wmds is that if you don t have uranium or plutonium you cannot build these weapons period thus in theory you completely solve the problem if you secure the material programs for securing material from the former soviet republics have been instituted for years but funding has embarrassingly been a problem plus there is no accurate estimate of how much material may have been stolen after the soviet union collapses securing this material would be the first thing to do secondly countries who want to peacefully pursue atomic energy must be provided nuclear material by an international body under the strictest of safeguards but most importantly there is one almost perfect solution which there is no getting around reduce the nuclear arsenals of the world to zero nada zilch there is no doubt that the us and russia which still stock the lion s share of nukes should take the lead a point which has been belabored often to scant effect this should especially be ludicrously easy for the us which still has thousands of nukes on hair trigger alert and which has conventional forces that could easily overwhelm any other country s defenses and offenses if there is one country that does not need any nuclear weapons it s the us followed by russia the psychological impact of the us renouncing every single nuclear weapon would be hard to overestimate nixon did it with chemical and biological weapons in the 70s it would be tremendous and would offer the us an unprecedented moral authority to ask others to do the same while it may not be easy for countries like india and israel which share extensive boundaries with unstable and dangerous regimes such an act will signify huge potential this ...