[lit-ideas] Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 02:16:21 -0800 (PST)
Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
Frida Berrigan | March 1, 2007
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4039
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
The Bush administration is very focused these days on
Iran?s nuclear program. This focus has only sharpened
in the aftermath of the International Atomic Energy
Agency?s recent report that Iran continues to enrich
uranium in defiance of a UN Security Council demand.
?A nuclear-armed Iran is not a very pleasant prospect
for anybody to think about,? Vice President Dick
Cheney told ABC News? Jonathan Karl in Australia. ?It
clearly could do significant damage. And so I think we
need to continue to do everything we can to make
certain they don't achieve that objective.? Asked if
the administration would continue to pursue diplomacy,
the vice president responded that while ?we've been
working with the EU and going through the United
Nations with sanctions? the President has also made it
clear that we haven't taken any options off the
table.?
In the White House, ?options on the table? is code for
military action. There have been many media reports of
U.S. preparations to attack Iran. But the primary
rationale for such an attack ? to prevent Iran from
going nuclear ? is deeply problematic. Not only is the
United States beefing up its military in general, it
is even planning a modernization of its nuclear
arsenal. The nuclear hypocrisy of the Bush
administration makes any resolution of the conflict
with Iran all the more difficult.
U.S. Military Spending
The new round of hand-wringing and saber-rattling
about Iran?s nascent but worrisome nuclear program
comes just a few weeks after the Bush administration
announced its new budget, which included billions for
nuclear weapons development. The Department of
Energy?s ?weapons activities? budget request totals
$6.4 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to the
Pentagon?s $481.4 billion proposed budget. But the
budget for new nukes is large and growing -- even in
comparison to Cold War figures.
During the Cold War, spending on nuclear weapons
averaged $4.2 billion a year (in current dollars).
Almost two decades after the nuclear animosity between
the two great superpowers ended, the United States is
spending one-and-a-half times the Cold War average on
nuclear weapons.
In 2001, the weapons-activities budget of the
Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees the nuclear
weapons complex through the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA), totaled $5.19 billion. Since
President Bush?s January 2002 ?Nuclear Posture Review?
asserted the urgent need for a ?revitalized nuclear
weapons complex? -- ?to design, develop, manufacture,
and certify new warheads in response to new national
requirements; and maintain readiness to resume
underground testing? -- there has been more than a
billion-dollar jump in nuclear spending. Included in
the $6.4 billion 2008 request is money for ?design
concept testing? of two new nuclear warhead designs
that officials hope will be deployed on
submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic
missiles-- even as U.S. warships set their helms
towards the Strait of Hormuz to menace Iran back from
the nuclear brink.
Costly, Illegal, and Dangerous
Key to revitalizing nuclear weapons is Complex 2030,
the NNSA?a ?infrastructure planning scenario for a
nuclear weapons complex able to meet the threats of
the 21st century.? It is a costly, illegal, and
dangerous program aimed at rebuilding the 50-year-old
nuclear facilities where the weapons are both
assembled and disassembled.
How Costly? The DOE estimates that Complex 2030 would
require a capital investment of $150 billion. But the
Government Accountability Office says that is way too
low to fund even the basic maintenance of the eight
nuclear facilities currently operational throughout
the country.
Why Illegal? Complex 2030 promises a return to the
Cold War cycle of design, development, and production
of nuclear weapons, runs the risk of a return to
underground nuclear testing, and could require the
annual manufacture of hundreds of new plutonium pits
-- the fissile ?heart? of a nuclear weapon. These
plans directly contradict U.S. treaty promises in 1968
?to negotiate toward general and complete
disarmament.?
How Dangerous? Every step the United States takes away
from the international consensus on the illegality and
immorality of nuclear weapons is a new incentive and
justification for other nations to pursue and brandish
nuclear weapons. In a 2006 report, the independent
?Weapons of Mass Destruction? Commission estimated the
dark likelihood of ten new nuclear powers within a
decade. At the end of January, the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists advanced the hand of its Doomsday
clock to five minutes to nuclear midnight, in part as
a result of ?renewed U.S. emphasis on the military
utility of nuclear weapons.?
As the United States surges forward in its nuclear
renaissance, the threat of nuclear terrorism and
accidental nuclear strikes remains a grave yet
under-funded priority. The administration occasionally
raises the specter of nuclear-armed terrorists. In
February 2004, for example, President Bush warned, ?In
the hands of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction
would be a first resort.? Despite its rhetoric,
however, the administration has done nothing to
accelerate efforts to destroy and safeguard loose
nuclear weapons and bomb-making materials, allocating
about $1 billion a year to these crucial
non-proliferation efforts (roughly the same amount
that the Bush administration has been burning through
each day in Iraq). At this rate, it will be 13 years
before Russian nuclear material is secured.
The contradictions between what the administration is
demanding of Tehran and other powers, and the
capabilities it is pursuing for its own arsenal, are
provocative and dangerous -- a pernicious form of
nuclear hypocrisy.
Dick Cheney is right -- a nuclear-armed Iran is not a
pleasant prospect, and we have to do something. But
the most effective option is the hardest to swallow.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United
States agreed to an ?unequivocal undertaking? to
?eliminate? its nuclear weapons arsenal. Honoring that
commitment -- and encouraging other declared and
undeclared nuclear states to do the same -- would
undercut Tehran?s arguments about why nuclear
firepower is necessary. Oh, and by the way, it would
also make the world feel a whole lot safer.
FPIF columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior research
associate at the New School.
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