Atlantic Community:Global Must Read Article ""Responsible" Nuclear Ownership is a Fiction"

George Monbiot, The Guardian | July 30, 2008

The permanent members of the UN security council condemn Iran, but they are just as guilty of nuclear proliferation. ++ The distinction between their supposedly "responsible" ownership of nuclear weapons and that of Iran, North Korea or Pakistan is entirely arbitrary: US, Russia, UK, and France refuse to disarm and have all declared they would be prepared to use their nuclear arsenal against a non-nuclear country if it constituted a threat. ++ In some ways, the current situation is “more dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.”

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Thu, Jul 31st 2008, 01:36

PE0M

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"Entirely arbitrary?" The USSR, US, UK, and France have managed to keep from using nuclear weapons since they acquired them. The US and USSR came close to unintentional conflict on more than one occasion. The world cannot confidently expect that even the relatively more stable nations will always detect false alarms in time and will always be under wise leadership. Would all leaders of nation states and all leaders of trans-national organizations be equally reliable were they to procure nuclear weapons? Adding variables to an already dicey situation is not the way to make progress. How to get all nations to trust that they are safe without nuclear weapons is a difficult but not insoluble problem. The entire problem becomes more difficult to solve, and more likely to go awry the more actors, and the more ideologically driven actors, are involved.

The Security Council members have not been guilty of proliferation (except to the extent that they developed nuclear weapons for themselves), nor have they been irresponsible. The Guardian writer is probably correct that there is now a higher probability of nuclear assaults made by a smaller nuclear power on one of its neighbors, but it is less likely that a full-scale nuclear exchange would occur between Russia and the US. Unfortunately, some circumstances might lead the world from a limited war to a full-scale war.

In a world wherein it is difficult to attain to a position of national power without major ego-centricity, it will be difficult to preserve peace.