Letters to the Editor
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no Mr. Levy
The utility of atomic weapons is strategic. That is, their greatest leverage is in not using them. What kept the Warsaw Pact out of Western Europe? What kept the Soviet Armies out of China? What kept the Soviet Strategic Rocket Force out of Cuba. Not the use of atomic weapons but the strategic ambiguity of possibly using atomic weapons. This is the strategic lever Iran can pull. An atomic Iran can and will control the Persian Gulf & Straits of Hormuz. It can and will propogate their Islamic Revolution into the FSU and Caucuses. It will push the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan and it can and will enforce economic penalties on the west vis a vis sanctions imposed against it? When was the last time you ever so much as heard of the UN rising up en masse and dedicating its entire purpose to flattening a nuclear state (Except for Evil ZioJewistan of course). See?
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A bunch of old men talking about themselves,
Lets just call this wordy mess what it is.
Beyond it's buddhist mindframe, and short pity statements which head nowhere:
... the Bush Doctrine has pushed us into a situation in which we can, strangely enough, see all this far more clearly.
That's exactly right. The Bush Doctrine had one virtue. As an imperial solution -- the United States will stop proliferation by military force, if need be, wherever it arises ...
The Bush doctrine is a similar thing, a bunch of old men talking about nothing from something. Just to fill in some gap while the mythological demon of Armageddon could be pushed closer to the front line unobserved, as we all busy ourselves chasing technology's tail fogged in by the economic pursuit of the day.
There were a series of articles concerning nuclear proliferation and the demise of the Soviet Union several years ago in Science. It is clear from those articles that the Bush administration effectively reversed the course of prior US policy in dealing with the consequences of that dissolution, and our ability to deal sanely with the left-over Soviet era nuclear material from the cold war.
It was as they say in this article almost as if they needed the failure to have an object of opposition against which to speak. Fogging our landscape with words, which had yet again some lessor connection to a present reality. Anything to remove the 'US' from 'them'. Anything to remove a present concern from our responsibility to providing a solution as citizens of the world.
KAZAKHSTAN: Plutonium Fields Forever
KURCHATOV, KAZAKHSTAN--A decade after inheriting the Soviet Union's vast nuclear testing range in Central Asia, authorities in Kazakhstan are only now discovering the extent of a dangerous legacy underfoot: plutonium hot spots that pose a serious proliferation threat. And access to the site is essentially uncontrolled and unrestricted.
Volume 300, Number 5623, Issue of 23 May 2003, pp. 1220-1224.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5623/1220
Good Prediction, Bad News (Editorial)
Volume 295, Number 5556, Issue of 1 Feb 2002, p. 765.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/295/5556/765
NUCLEAR WASTE: 'Hot' Legacy Raises Alarm in the Caucasus
VIENNA--Can a crack international team secure two tremendously radioactive objects in the mountains of a strife-torn former Soviet republic before they fall into the hands of nuclear terrorists? The question may sound like a trailer for a James Bond movie, but it's for real. Science has learned that the International Atomic Energy Agency early this week dispatched a team to a remote area near Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to grab the dangerous, portable devices.
Science 2002 February 1; 295: 777-779. (in News of the Week)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5556/777b
NONPROLIFERATION: Radioactive Sources Move From a Concern to a Crisis
Richard Stone
Science Dec 5 2003: 1644-1645
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5651/1644a
NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: Nuclear Trafficking: 'A Real and Dangerous Threat'
STOCKHOLM--The former Soviet Union's stockpile of fissile material remains dangerously vulnerable. Six seizures of weapons-grade nuclear materials have been reported over the past 2 years, indicating that a decade-long effort to lock down about 600 tons of Soviet-era highly enriched uranium and plutonium that is considered especially vulnerable--enough raw material for about 40,000 bombs--has far to go. Yet the Bush Administration has proposed cutting $100 million from a raft of programs to improve nuclear security in Russia.
Volume 292, Number 5522, Issue of 1 Jun 2001, pp. 1632-1636. (News Focus).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/gca?gca=292%2F5522%2F1632&sendit.x=108&sendit.y=1
It's hard to see how this article helps clear a way through this chaos, when the intent of time appears to be for us to fail at recognizing and pacifying this construct of our minds.
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Dear Nulla Sallus
You might be correct if the Iranians had strategic nuclear forces. They don't even have tactical nukes, and won't for years. So your nightmare scenario lacks credibility. I have seen no evidence, and you have none, that Iran wants to commit national suicide. They have actually had a surprisingly cautious foreign policy since 1979 for a revolutionary regime. It was our buddy Saddam who attacked them, remember? It was our navy that escorted that paragon of evil, that gasser of the Kurds, tankers throught he Gulf, or have you forgotten that, too. Without a serious strategic nuclear force that can wallop the US (which means not only nukes but delivery systems Iran is not even in the same zip code of possessing) Iran cannot seriously leverage any presumed future nuclear capability for anything but defensive purposes, and that is what they want--a deterrent force to keep Uncle Sam off their grass. I think they are foolish to pursue one, but then I think the whole nuclear game is a bit nuts. By your own logic and thinking, however, if you were an Iranian, don't tell me that you wouldn't DEMAND that your government got a few nukes for national defense. Because, again, if you haven't notices, while Iran was busy invading nobody since 1979 the US invaded or attacked Libya, Iraq, Panama, Haiti, Serbia, Lebanon, and Granada, and supplied terrorists in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Afghanistan (or are Mr. bin Laden and his buddies still "freedom fighters'?). What you want to do is kill vast numbers of people and start a war because you are scared of some maybe scenario years down the road. That may be your feeling, but it is not rational and is certainly immoral.