- 25 Mar 2004 16:27
#134921
Proliferator-in-chief
Bush blocks treaty... again
Special report: George Bush's America
Leader
Thursday July 26, 2001
The Guardian
George Bush's administration yesterday blasted another lethal hole in the vital structure of multilateral arms agreements that has so far protected most of the world from the worst dangers of the modern military age. America's lone, wanton wrecking of long-running negotiations to enforce the 1972 treaty banning biological or germ weapons is an insult to the pact's 142 other signatories, a body-blow for the treaty itself and a major setback for international efforts to agree practical curbs on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
By this action, the US suggests that its national security interests, narrowly defined, and the commercial interests of its dominant biotechnology sector should take precedence over responsible global collaboration to meet a common threat. By rejecting the proposed inspection regime, it further, dangerously, suggests to others that the US is not really worried about germ-warfare controls and wants to develop its own, advanced biological weapons.
This in turn could have a serious impact on continuing efforts to bolster the equally important chemical weapons convention. Since Tony Blair's government has been particularly active in promoting the BWC enforcement protocol, it may now be expected to be particularly active in condemning this latest piece of Bush vandalism. Jack Straw should summon the US ambassador, a Bush appointee, to the Foreign Office and demand an explanation.
The US move confirms a pattern of reckless, unilateralist behaviour on arms control, as on environmental and other issues. Since taking office, Mr Bush has spoken in grandiose terms of the need for "new thinking" and for a "new strategic framework". But to date, this supposed post-cold war global security "vision" has largely amounted to trashing existing agreements without any clear idea of what to put in their place.
Mr Bush scorns the concept of deterrence, based on mutually assured destruction, but fails to explain how the world can safely live without it. He plans to resume nuclear testing, undermining the comprehensive test ban treaty. He intends to breach the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He wants to develop "bunker-buster" battlefield warheads, ignoring the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. He emasculated recent UN attempts to regulate small arms and light weaponry. Meanwhile, he is dusting off Ronald Reagan's plans to deploy space weapons - plans that Mr Reagan's former rival, Jimmy Carter, tersely described this week as "technologically ridiculous".
Yet all this charging about in the arms control crockery shop does little or nothing to reduce the biggest actual, as opposed to hypothetical, threat: that posed by relatively cheap, easily produced biological and chemical weapons and by "portable" nukes that may be obtained by transnational terrorists. Indeed, by deflecting attention and resources, it makes it worse. In recent days, four instances of smuggling of nuclear-related material have come to light in Europe. This coincides with a review of Clinton era schemes to help Russia safeguard or dispose of stockpiles. One $2.1bn programme, to destroy military plutonium, faces cancellation. Others may be offered with political strings attached. No wonder the black market is booming.
The so-called "rogue states" are not the principal problem - and missile defence is certainly no answer. The core problem is proliferation - and the undermining of painstakingly agreed, multilateral arms control structures. Instead of helping, commander-in-chief Bush is fast becoming the new proliferator-in-chief.
Published on Sunday, September 17, 2000 in the Boston Globe
Time To Ban Land Mines
Editorial
THERE WAS AN EMPTY chair at the Geneva meeting this past week on implementation of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The 138 signers of the Treaty were reviewing progress made in removing mines, treating victims, and destroying stockpiles of a weapon that maims or murders 22,000 people a year.
The empty chair was a symbolic invitation to governments that have not yet signed the treaty. Among these are Iraq, North Korea, Libya, China, and Russia. Sad to say, that empty chair in Geneva also beckons the United States.
The refusal of America to sign the Mine Ban Treaty represents a particularly embarrassing contradiction, since President Clinton, during a 1994 speech to the UN General Assembly, became the first leader of a major power to demand elimination of all antipersonnel land mines. In 1996, Clinton pledged in public that the United States would spearhead an international campaign to rid the world of antipersonnel land mines. And the Clinton administration has led the way in contributing money for the clearing of mines from sites of conflict and for the medical treatment of surviving land mine victims.
Retired military commanders such as General Norman Schwarzkopf have come out in favor of signing the Mine Ban Treaty not merely because of a universal moral imperative to protect innocent farmers and children in war-blasted lands such as Cambodia, Mozambique, or Afghanistan, but because during the Vietnam War and recent peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, about a third of casualties suffered by American troops were caused by land mines and booby traps.
In 1997, this page accepted the Pentagon's argument that land mines were still needed to defend the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. At the time, we noted that the land mines planted along the DMZ ''are all defensive, are not indiscriminately sown, nor are they blowing up civilians.''
That position is less defensible today because of the dramatic recent thaw in relations between a famine-wracked North Korea and a democratic South Korea. Also, the military utility of land mines on the DMZ has become more dubious than ever. If North Korea ever took the suicidal decision to invade the South, it could use explosive hoses and aerosol defusing sprays to render land mines a mere nuisance. The North Koreans are also capable of tunneling under the mine fields or parachuting over them.
The time has come for America to assume its rightful place as leader in the campaign to ban completely a weapon as inhumane as viruses or chemical gases.
Brave men are just the same as Ordinary men, there just brave for 5 minutes longer.
- By Puffer Fish
- By FiveofSwords
- By litwin