[Peace-discuss] More Obama lies, this time on nukes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[It's slowly becoming clear, if it wasn't already, that as a national leader BHO 
has the commitment and the effectiveness of an Ali Zadari - the difference 
between them being roughly proportional to that between the US and Pakistan; 
Obama is taller. --CGE]

	Nuclear Disarmament: A Major Defeat
	by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
	This article appeared in the May 17, 2010 edition of The Nation.
	April 29, 2010

Looking back on it, could there ever have been a glimmer of hope that the United 
States would adopt a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons; concede that 
there is zero reason to maintain a full arsenal of strategic missiles and a 
fleet of bombers, on full alert to repel a Russian invasion of Europe; and start 
winding down the nuclear-industrial-scientific complex? Not really. It would be 
like expecting the single-payer approach to healthcare reform or strenuous 
regulation of the banking industry.

But for those who cheered President Obama's commitment, made in Prague a year 
ago and at the UN in September, that "we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons 
in our national security strategy," the Defense Department's Nuclear Posture 
Review, released on April 6, was a savage disappointment. The administration did 
not merely reassert the essential premises of US nuclear strategy but used the 
publication of the review and the subsequent Nuclear Security Summit in 
Washington as occasions to intensify the threats against North Korea and Iran. 
In the case of North Korea, Obama doomed any positive advances and reminded its 
leaders that America's preferred method of negotiation takes the form of eight 
nuclear submarines in the North Pacific within a twelve-minute range of 
Pyongyang. The crucial sentence in the review, insistently repeated by Obama, 
states that "the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons 
against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance 
with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations." This is great news for the 
Holy See, Venezuela and Yemen, which along with 180-plus other nations have 
signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And no, the president was not 
threatening to attack Israel, which has nuclear weapons but has not signed the NPT.

The US position is that the biggest nuclear threat in the world today comes from 
those who do not have nuclear weapons, or whose nuclear armory is diminutive to 
the point of invisibility, and that global security is properly vested in the 
hands of those who have substantial nuclear arsenals, starting with the only 
country that has actually dropped nuclear bombs - and indeed lost them (eleven 
in the case of the United States since 1945).

Here's how the ongoing commitment to "first use" is expressed in the review: "In 
the case of countries not covered by this assurance - states that possess 
nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear 
non-proliferation obligations - there remains a narrow range of contingencies in 
which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or 
CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its 
allies and partners. The United States is therefore not prepared at the present 
time to adopt a universal policy that deterring nuclear attack is the sole 
purpose of nuclear weapons."

The US strategic nuclear triad will remain on action stations, ready to destroy 
the planet. The review concluded that "the current alert posture of U.S. 
strategic forces - with heavy bombers off full-time alert, nearly all ICBMs on 
alert, and a significant number of SSBNs at sea at any given time - should be 
maintained for the present." Forward-deployed US nuclear weapons in Europe will 
remain. Though Article VI of the NPT famously commits its signatories to 
"negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the 
nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament," heading toward a 
"Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective 
international control," the United States remains dedicated to "NATO's unique 
nuclear sharing arrangements under which non-nuclear members participate in 
nuclear planning and possess specially configured aircraft capable of delivering 
nuclear weapons."

As of 2005, the United States was providing about 180 tactical B61 nuclear bombs 
for use by Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey under these NATO 
agreements. Articles I and II of the NPT prohibit the transfer of nuclear 
weapons to non-nuclear states. So why should countries under threat be asked to 
surrender the nuclear option when states under no such risk are supplied with 
nuclear bombs or missiles?

The deals extorted by the nuclear-industrial-scientific complex are starkly on 
display: "The U.S. nuclear stockpile must be supported by a modern physical 
infrastructure - comprised of the national security laboratories and a complex 
of supporting facilities.... Increased funding is needed for the Chemistry and 
Metallurgy Research Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory to 
replace the existing 50-year old facility, and to develop a new Uranium 
Processing Facility...in Oak Ridge, Tennessee."

What does this bode for START negotiations? The Russians, who are being asked to 
reduce their nuclear-force levels, can point not only to NATO's ongoing 
aggressive moves to establish bases surrounding their country but to the fact 
that this rehabbing of the US processing facilities is enhancing its capacity to 
produce plutonium and thus swiftly multiply its nuclear arsenal with a change in 
regime and hence of nuclear posture.

The cause of nuclear disarmament has sustained a very serious, albeit 
predictable, defeat. The news will only get worse. Ahead lies the impending 
redraft of NATO's strategic concept, last reformulated in 1999: "The fundamental 
purpose of the nuclear forces of the Allies is political...to fulfill an 
essential role by ensuring uncertainty in the mind of any aggressor.... The 
supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the strategic 
nuclear forces of the Alliance."

Ironic, is it not, to read these invocations of "security" amid the impending 
bankruptcies of Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland and the destruction of the 
euro, and as the unemployment lines grow steadily across the United States and 
Europe, oh-so-safe beneath the nuclear umbrella?

	***

[The Nation on Alexander Cockburn - "The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist and 
one of America's best-known radical journalists, was born in Scotland and grew 
up in Ireland. He graduated from Oxford in 1963 with a degree in English 
literature and language.
      "After two years as an editor at the Times Literary Supplement, he worked 
at the New Left Review and The New Statesman, and co-edited two Penguin volumes, 
on trade unions and on the student movement.
       "A permanent resident of the United States since 1973 [and now a US 
citizen --CGE], Cockburn wrote for many years for The Village Voice about the 
press and politics. Since then he has contributed to many publications including 
The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the 
Wall Street Journal (where he had a regular column from 1980 to 1990), as well 
as alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley 
Advertiser.
      "He has written "Beat the Devil" since 1984.
      "He is co-editor, with Jeffrey St Clair, of the newsletter and radical 
website CounterPunch (http://www.counterpunch.org) which have a substantial 
world audience. In 1987 he published a best-selling collection of essays, 
Corruptions of Empire, and two years later co-wrote, with Susanna Hecht, The 
Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon (both 
Verso). In 1995 Verso also published his diary of the late 80s, early 90s and 
the fall of Communism, The Golden Age Is In Us. With Ken Silverstein he wrote 
Washington Babylon; with Jeffrey St. Clair he has written or coedited several 
books including: Whiteout, The CIA, Drugs and the Press; The Politics of 
Anti-Semitism; Imperial Crusades; Al Gore, A User's Manual; Five Days That Shook 
the World; and A Dime's Worth of Difference, about the two-party system in 
America."]

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