US wants nuclear transparency, but not for its own bombs
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The first US hydrogen bomb test is shown in the Pacific at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands, November 1, 1952. AP Photo
Amid all of last week’s headlines parsing Iran’s nuclear
infrastructure as the deadline for a potential deal with world powers
drew near,
it was easy to miss the item in the Science section of The New York Times. It was about the US hydrogen bomb programme.
The H-bomb, the paper
reminded readers, is a thermonuclear device. Its destructive power is
1,000 times that of the bomb that instantly killed 80,000 people in
Hiroshima in 1945. And it has long been a feature in the arsenals of nuclear-armed states.
The news peg was a memoir by one of the founders of the US H-bomb
programme, Kenneth W Ford. But even though he cited publicly available
material,
US Department of Energy censors blocked the book.
Transparency, of course, has never been deemed a virtue in any
nuclear weapons programme anywhere in the world. That said, Iran’s
leaders might see the irony in being held to stringent transparency
requirements while states with well-established nuclear-weapons
capability are absolved of the equivalent accountability.
But the basic hypocrisy of
the major world powers’ application of the Nuclear non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) is well-established. Five of the countries currently
negotiating with Iran, which is an NPT signatory, are acknowledged to
have nuclear weapons. The NPT requires signatories to submit their
nuclear facilities to constant inspections to verify their commitment to
refrain from building weapons.
Meanwhile,
the established nuclear weapons states are meant to negotiate their way
to disarmament. But 45 years after they adopted the NPT, the
established nuclear powers have not ended their addiction to nuclear
weapons.
In that period, four non-signatories – India, Pakistan, Israel and
South Africa – developed nuclear weapons, although post-apartheid South
Africa signed the NPT and allowed the dismantling of its nukes.
Meanwhile, a fifth country, North Korea, developed nuclear weapons after
withdrawing from the NPT .
So the negotiations with
Iran are not aimed at keeping the Middle East free of nuclear weapons as
much as to maintain America and Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the
region.
But the censoring of Ford’s book reveals a deeper peril in America’s
national conversation about nuclear weapons – or, more accurately, the
absence of a national conversation about nuclear weapons.
It can never be forgotten that the US was the first – and,
mercifully, remains the only – country to have detonated nuclear weapons
in anger.
On August 6, 1945,
that bomb instantly killed one quarter of Hiroshima’s civilian
population. Three days later, it detonated a second device over
Nagasaki, killing 40,000.
The decision to use weapons of mass destruction to destroy civilian
population centres has not been exhaustively debated in the US. It was
simply accepted as part of the national mythology that obliterating two
Japanese cities was necessary to save many more lives.
When Washington’s Smithsonian Institution planned,
in 1995, an exhibit depicting the impact of the bomb through
photographs taken on the ground in Hiroshima, the effort was blocked by
Congressional Republicans. They denounced it as “anti-American
propaganda”. They did so, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, explained,
because “most Americans … are sick and tired of being told by some
cultural elite that they ought to be ashamed of their country”.
America’s nuclear arsenal now includes weapons a thousand times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Most of its 4,650 active nuclear warheads are between 10 and 50 times
as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Yet, the decision to nuke the
Japanese city is one that American politicians don’t want their people
to discuss. No surprise then, that there’s not much public discussion
today on the place of nuclear weapons in the nation’s security doctrine.
During the 2008 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential
nomination, then-Senator Hillary Clinton rebuked her rival, Barack
Obama, for ruling out the use of nuclear force against Al Qaeda in
Pakistan. “Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to
keep the peace,” Mrs Clinton said, rejecting any “blanket statements
with regard to use or non-use.” This was the view of the politician who
might be in pole position in the 2016 race for the White House.
In April 2009, president Obama made a historic speech in Prague
committing to pursue a “a world without nuclear weapons”and to reduce
the number of warheads in the US arsenal. But he also pledged, in light
of continued nuclear capability by rival powers, to ensure that the US
maintains an “effective arsenal”.
That commitment has now translated, according to the budget he submitted to Congress last month, into
a
massive modernisation scheme, which would cost $348 billion (Dh 1.28
trillion) over the next 10 years and as much as $1 trillion over a
30-year period.
Still, don’t expect to see much public debate over just what the US
is building, and the circumstances in which it might conceivably decide –
once again – to destroy a civilian population centre in a matter of
minutes.
The world would be a much safer place if, as the NPT intended,
efforts to stop new countries acquiring nuclear weapons were matched by
the attempt to hold accountable those that already have them.
Tony Karon teaches in the graduate programme at the New School in New York
