Why nuclear might isn't right
The commendable raft of anti-proliferation measures that US President George W. Bush announced in the wake of the Pakistani scandal would be more effective if the five nuclear Brahmins in the global caste system also demonstrated respect for their legal and moral obligation to disarm under Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The nuclear black market flourishes because rulers covet the bomb for political rather than military reasons. It looms large in their consciousness as a symbol of unity, determination and self-respect. Given the jungle values of our civilisation, a nation with the power of annihilation is regarded as more important than one without it. Tragically, realpolitik does nothing to correct such perverse thinking. The fact that the only permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - are also the only acknowledged nuclear states, further identifies might with right in the eyes of many developing nations, as does the fact that the US, with the deadliest arsenal of all, sets the global agenda.
They suspect the nuclear haves of using institutions and systems like the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), dual-use technology restrictions, export controls and sophisticated monitoring to keep the have-nots in permanent deprivation. They also see India, Pakistan and Israel getting away with it.
What The New York Times called the 'elaborate charade' of the televised confession and pardon of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's 'larger-than-life national hero', citing President Pervez Musharraf, strengthens scepticism. Pakistan's nuclear programme has been no secret since 1972, when former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto famously vowed to eat grass to build the bomb. It was his response to defeat in the Bangladesh war. Addressing posterity from his death cell in 1979, Bhutto made two significant points about his nuclear programme. He acknowledged Chinese assistance, claiming Pakistan's 1976 agreement with China as his 'greatest achievement and contribution to the survival of [his] people and nation'. And he defended an 'Islamic bomb': 'We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilisations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilisation was without it, but that situation was about to change.'
IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei believes the controversy over Dr Khan is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the facts were already well known. There were early thefts of nuclear secrets from the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the US. Iranian and Pakistani scientists (including Dr Khan) collaborated openly. Transfers of mainland Chinese nuclear technology and equipment and Taiwanese interceptions of North Korean missile shipments have both been reported. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace claims that Pakistan obtained its first atomic weapon in 1986.
But the Reagan and first Bush administrations suppressed the evidence as long as Pakistan was needed to organise the Afghan mujahedeen, including Osama bin Laden. It was only after the Soviets left Afghanistan that George Bush Snr refused in 1990 to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device, a condition for aid.
Rogue states and terrorists cannot have failed to note this subordination of proliferation requirements to US strategic imperatives. Supporting George W. Bush's call for stricter vigilance, Mr El Baradei now seeks a more objective effort to prevent proliferation. He wants a strengthened NPT, resumed negotiations on a Fissile Materials Control Treaty, enforcement of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a road map for disarmament. Article VI of the NPT, which the International Court of Justice has upheld, already demands 'general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control' and calls on signatories 'to make progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate aim of eliminating those weapons'. In 1996, the UN's Group of 21 (developing countries) voted for an ad hoc committee on nuclear disarmament in terms of the original Geneva conference. It was shot down.
It is time to revive that initiative. Example remains the best teacher. We need some salutary move by the Big Five to demonstrate that rogue states and terrorists alone are not expected to make the world a safer place for us all.
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The views expressed in this article are those of the author
