John Hallam
That the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technologies is a bad thing that should be strongly discouraged is beyond doubt. The probability that by malice, madness, miscalculation or malfunction, a nuclear weapon will again be used is increased by the growing number of governments that posses nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.
Looked at in this way, the missile tests carried out by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) on July 5 are cause for serious concern. However, an astonishing, indeed breathtaking, double standard has just been applied to the DPRK.
True, the failed test of a Taepodong long-range missile (which only flew for 42 seconds before disintegrating), coupled with the launch of a number of shorter-range ballistic missiles that worked as designed, is worrying. It is safe to bet that the next time a Taepodong-3 rocket is tested, it will do better.
It is also true that the continued development of the DPRK nuclear arsenal, which at 13 weapons (according to the latest Western estimate) is the smallest nuclear arsenal in the world, could possibly provide a pretext for Japan to build nuclear weapons.
But, and here the double standard stands out in flashing lights, while the DPRK's test of a long-range missile that failed resulted in the UN Security Council's condemnation, on June 14 the US successfully tested a Minuteman-3 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), without any protest or condemnation from the "international community". The dummy warhead on the missile travelled 6800 kilometres in just 30 minutes, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on the US west coast to the Kwajelien test range in the mid-Pacific.
Armed and operational Minuteman-3 ICBMs, of which the US has 500, can each propel three nuclear warheads — each with a destructive force 20 times that of the atom bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in 1945 — to targets 13,000km from their launch sites.
There were no calls for the US to be taken before the Security Council for this egregious violation of its obligations under article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to achieve the total and unequivocal elimination of its nuclear arsenal.
Similarly, there was no protest or condemnation from the "international community" when, on June 30, Russia carried out the successful test of an RSM-54 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), sending a dummy warhead 4800km from the Barents Sea to Russia's Pacific coast Kamchatka Peninsula. An armed RSM-54 SLBM can deliver four nuclear warheads to targets 8300km from its launch platform — the 12,000-tonne Tula-class nuclear-powered submarine, of which Russia has seven, each carrying 16 RSM-54 missiles.
The established nuclear weapons powers simply cannot credibly ask countries like North Korea to forgo the joys of mutual incineration while strenuously hanging onto that capability themselves, and while failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations under the NPT.
The DPRK has at most 13 nuclear weapons, and a delivery capability that extends as far as Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul. However, between them the US and Russia have something like 21,000 nuclear weapons. Moreover, they each have about 2000 nuclear warheads — with a combined destruction force at least equal to 100,000 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs — mounted on ICBMs that are kept on permanent hair-trigger alert, capable of rendering the planet uninhabitable in about 40 minutes. On a number of terrifying occasions, this has come close to taking place, each time by accident.
Hopefully these numbers will restore a sense of proportion to the North Korean fracas. Yes, the acquisition of a nuclear capability by the DPRK and its possible acquisition of the ability to nuke Los Angeles is a worry. But it is the massive nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia — that they want to retain in perpetuity — that threaten to literally destroy the world.
And, without progress on the fulfilment of the disarmament obligations of the nuclear superpowers, others, such as North Korea, will continue to want to acquire nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
[John Hallam is a Friends of the Earth Australia anti-nuclear weapons campaigner.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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