96: THE NUCLEAR DANGER
Source: Voice of America
DATE=12/13/96TYPE=YEAREND REPORT NUMBER=5-35198
BYLINE= ED WARNER DATELINE= WASHINGTON
Introduction:
Can the twenty-first century be nuclear free? That is the dream of many people concerned with weapons of mass destruction. Some steps in that direction were taken this year, but much more needs to be done, and the danger of nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands remains acute. In the first of three scripts, VOA's Ed Warner reports on the outlook for the control of nuclear weapons at the end of 1996.
Text:
In an unprecedented statement, a group of some sixty military leaders from around the world, including americans and russians, warned of the rising danger of nuclear weapons. On the basis of their own military experience, they said stockpiles of this weaponry should be reduced much faster with the ultimate aim of eliminating them altogether.
They acknowledged this would take many years, time enough to work out the many technical and political problems. Others have noted the danger that in a non-nuclear world, a nation that secretly acquired such a weapon could become an overnight superpower.
Gary Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, welcomes the generals' and admirals' statement:
// milhollin actuality //
I think it is useful for military leaders to say they think the military utility of nuclear weapons is practically nil (zero) because they are stating something that is first of all true; and second, it needs to come from them since they are the people who have the best knowledge of war fighting and what it takes to win a war, and what the possibilities of controlling and losing control of nuclear weapons really are.
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Mr. Milhollin agrees with the military leaders that while there were some tense confrontations between the two superpowers during the cold war, the danger from nuclear weapons has in some ways increased:
// milhollin actuality //
The bomb grew up in a very unusual historical time; that is, during the cold war when we had an extraordinarily stable world with two superpowers that practically controlled everything, and each could predict what the other would do under various circumstances. Now we are going to the world of 1914 (first world war) where we have a diffuse power arrangement in the world, and nobody can really be sure what anybody else is going to do.
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Mr. Milhollin says the spread of nuclear weapons in such an environment is courting disaster.
What form might that disaster take? All-out war between certain nations is one possibility.
Joseph Cirincione is a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington and Chairman of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, a group of seventeen US arms control organizations:
// cirincione actuality //
South asia remains the area of the world where we are most likely to see the use of a nuclear weapon in combat. Both Pakistan and India have nuclear devices. They are locked in a shooting war currently. There are shots exchanged every day over kashmir. There are entrenched antagonisms in this area of the world. If pakistan and india should go to war, it is quite possible that could escalate to the use of a nuclear device.
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Even more threatening, says Mr. Cirincione, is the possibility of an accident or a terrorist attack:
// cirincione actuality //
Terrorist groups or terrorist states or rogue states, as they are sometimes called, might get their hands on nuclear weapons by acquiring the material particularly from the vast stockpiles in the states of the former soviet union: stealing it, buying it from a corrupt official. This possibility is probably the greatest threat to the national security of the united states at this point, the threat of unauthorized access to the plutonium or nuclear materials in the states of the former Soviet Union by some terrorist group.
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Mr. Cirincione says the world must be prepared for any of a variety of nuclear threats.
The nuclear danger (2) Introduction:
Various agreements have been made to limit nuclear weapons, but how effective are they and how should they be expanded? VOA's Ed Warner deals with the debate in the second of three reports on the year-end outlook for the control of nuclear weaponry.
Text:
"Does President Clinton want to go down in history as a world leader?" asks general Edward Rowny, who served as a US negotiator on arms control. Writing in "The Wall Street Journal," he urges the president to press the russians to ratify Start Two, the agreement that substantially reduces both countries' nuclear arsenals. Then he says they should move on to Start Three.
But the Russian Duma is balking, partly in reaction to the eastward expansion of nato. Joseph Cirincione, a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, says ratifying start two is crucial to the disarmament process:
// cirincione actuality //
This would bring the deployed nuclear forces of both Russia and the United States down to about 3500 warheads. As soon as that happens, both President Clinton and President Yeltsin have promised to start talks on a Start Three treaty, which hopefully would reduce the nuclear arsenals to around 1000 to 2000 warheads. This is the kind of steady reduction process that you need that would get us down to hundreds of maybe even dozens of warheads in the near future; that is, over the next ten years or so.
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Mr. Cirincione says momentum has been built for Start Two with the extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty last year and the recent approval of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty:
// cirincione actuality //
We have certainly made progress since the height of the cold war. There have been a number of very important arms control agreements completed in the last few years. More are under way. Of course, the demise of the Soviet Union tremendously increased the possibilites for great reductions in the arsenals of the two great powers. That is the good new. The bad news is that there are still a lot of nuclear weapons in the world.
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More bad news than good, says Gary Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. He thinks there is a tendency in the arms control community to mistake words for deeds:
// milhollin actuality //
If you just concentrate on what diplomats do and on the kind of papers they sign, you can say to yourself: "Well, we have made tremendous progress because we have signed a bunch of papers." the difficulty is that the papers have very little effect on what is happening on the ground.
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Mr Milhollin is especially concerned with exports of advanced technology that put commercial interests ahead of national security:
// milhollin actuality //
I think the world is probably less safe now than it was, say, two or three years ago, primarily because we continue to decontrol sensitive technology that is going out to the world in commerce and winding up in the wrong places, and second, we still have not developed a successful strategy for dealing with china's export behaviour.
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Mr. Milhollin says the United States seems to get more upset over china's pirating of videos and computer software than its sale of nuclear related technology to pakistan and other countries. The message is whatever else you do, do not pick on Hollywood or Silicon Valley.
Mr. Milhollin is also unhappy with the recent decision of the US Department of Energy to dispose of the plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads. While part of it will be immobilized and buried, the remainder will be burned as fuel in nuclear reactors
This continued use of plutonium reverses US policy, says Mr. Milhollin, and encourages other countries to keep burning it regardless of the dangers of theft and accident. He says that Russia in particular fails to safeguard the plutonium it uses.
Joseph Cirincione acknowledges the concern, but considers the US approach to be balanced, given the magnitude of the problem. It takes only ten pounds of plutonium to make a nuclear device one hundred times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Yet the United States has fifty tons of plutonium, and there may be several hundred in the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Cirincione says the big news is we are finally committed to getting rid of the man-made menace.
The nuclear danger (3) Introduction:
In response to the the nuclear threat, the arms control community urges much more attention to potential violaters and decisive action against them, if necessary. These tactics seem to have worked in some cases. VOA's Ed Warner provides the last of three reports on the year-end outlook for the control of nuclear weapons.
Text:
Humanity has devised ever more impressive ways of eliminating itself. Chemical and biological weapons have now joined nuclear ones to threaten the globe. But the nuclear remain the weapon of choice since the chemical is not so lethal and the biological may miss its target.
Joseph Cirincione, a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, says we should concentrate first on the nuclear danger. Intelligence analysts tell him that sooner or later, a nuclear terrorist act will occur:
// cirincione actuality //
It might be an explosion such as we saw in the World Trade center, except with a nuclear device. Some people think it is more likely it would be what they call a radiological weapon, a conventional explosion laced with radioactive materials that would spread radioactive poison over square miles of territory.
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Gary Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, says nuclear threats must be addressed on a continuing basis, not just when a crisis occurs, like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait:
// milhollin actuality //
The main problem, unfortunately, is simply to deny the means to make the bomb to countries with which we have very poor diplomatic relations and that we have no control over. That is a long painful process in which you are mostly playing for time. You are hoping that if you slow these countries down enough and make it expensive enough, you can hope for a political change before they get to the point where they actually make the bomb.
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This has worked in some places, says Mr. Milhollin. Both Argentina and brazil were on the path to the nuclear bomb but were denied relevant technology. A change in their governments put an end to the quest. Mr. Milhollin says it is easier to stop the development of nuclear weapons than to remove them once they are in place. He cites the case of North Korea, where the nuclear program has been frozen but with no plan to dismantle it.
Existing weaponry can be removed, says Mr. Cirincione, if the political will is there:
// cirincione actuality //
In the last few years, we have seen four nations turn away from the nuclear option; that is, give up nuclear weapons that they had. Specifically, South Africa disassembled the six nuclear weapons it had secretly built under the white regime. Three new nuclear nations came into existence once the Soviet Union collapsed: Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. These three nations just this year voluntarily returned these weapons to Russia, destroying many of them in the process and joined the non-proliferation treaty as nonm-nuclear nations.
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Mr. Cirincione says this surrender of nuclear weapons was aided by some deft american diplomacy and a willingness to spend money on transporting and disassembling the weaponry. He considers this a small price to pay for global safety. (Signed)
Source: voice of america
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