Nukes'
Seventh Decade
By
David Swanson
23 November,
2007
Afterdowningstreet.org
Jonathan
Schell's latest book "The Seventh Decade" places our current
situation in the context of the past 62 years of the nuclear age, or
the past 68 years as Schell might prefer to date it. It was 68 years
ago that scientists concluded a nuclear bomb was possible. Scientists
and politicians immediately began trying to develop nukes out of fear
that someone else would do so first. And as soon as nukes had been developed
in one country, spies began passing the information to other countries
out of fear that they would fail to develop their own nukes, thus leaving
one nuclear nation unchecked.
We arrived
18 years ago in a situation in which the first nuclear nation is largely
unchallenged. This has led to aggressive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
but not the use of nukes. In fact, nuclear powers have time and again
lost brutal wars to smaller states without making use of nuclear bombs.
It is highly unlikely that a small state developing a nuclear bomb in
a nuke-free world would be able to bend other states to its will. And
nukes are no weapons at all against non-state terrorists with box cutters.
So why don't the nuclear powers disarm?
New nations
are rapidly pursuing membership in the ranks of nuclear states largely
because there are nuclear states, and the proliferation of nuclear technology
facilitates additional proliferation, fueling a vicious cycle that makes
nuclear war ever more likely. Schell's book lays out an overwhelming
case that we have two and only two choices before us:
"If
a person gets lung cancer, a doctor may prescribe a harsh regimen of
chemotherapy to prevent the disease's spread and save the patient's
life. The patient may reject the recommendation, but then must expect
metastasis and all its consequences. The diagnostician's advice regarding
nuclear danger today must be of the same kind. Do you want to stop the
spread of nuclear weapons? Then prepare yourself to get rid of your
own. But perhaps you want to hold onto your bombs? All right, but then
get ready for proliferation. Get ready for new cold wars - or hot. And
get ready for nuclear explosions in your cities."
Schell recounts
how tragically close Reagan and Gorbachev came to complete nuclear disarmament.
The point at which the negotiations fell apart was Reagan's unwillingness
to disarm without creating a missile defense system, and Gorbachev's
refusal to believe that Reagan would share such a system with the Soviet
Union. Had Gorbachev realized that such a system would fail, he might
have conceded the meaningless bargaining chip and disarmed the two largest
nuclear states.
Now the clear
purpose of so-called "missile defense" systems is aggressive
war from space. And the goal of non-proliferation rhetoric is to provide
excuses for launching aggressive wars with conventional (or perhaps
even nuclear) weapons. But the whole idea of using military force to
block proliferation is very new. It may also be short-lived, having
shown itself to be both fraudulent and a failure on its own terms.
Short-lived
also was the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s. Schell points out
that we now live in a time when excuses for nuclear arsenals must be
even more strained and fantastical, but pressure to disarm has evaporated.
Ridding the world of nukes now seems so 80s. Schell notes that none
of what he calls "major" presidential candidates are talking
about disarmament. But Schell must still be living in the media universe
of the 1980s if he does not realize that talk of disarmament would be
enough to immediately disqualify one as a "major" candidate.
Schell imagines
a nuclear-free world, but cannot imagine influencing the national conversation
by supporting a candidate, like Dennis Kucinich, who agrees with him.
Schell does
place some hope, as do I, in the possibility that a movement to end
global warming will grow to include a movement to eliminate nuclear
weapons. The two movements would seem to be perfect allies, as it would
be quite a shame to save the world from one of the two dangers we face
and lose it to the other.
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