But the VOA only mentions two of those nations as dangers: Iran and North Korea. What about the other 38? Apparently, in this age of a “what-me-worry” president, we just aren’t supposed to worry.
At the tail end of its news item, the VOA adds this: “Nuclear issues will be discussed next year in New York, during the review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty””the legal cornerstone of non-proliferation efforts. Under terms of the pact, non-nuclear states are bound not to acquire nuclear weapons while the five declared nuclear states (the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia) pledge to disarm. The four-week session in May will bring the 187 signatories together to debate whether the treaty needs to be revised and strengthened to meet the nuclear challenges in the years ahead.”
But neither the VOA, nor any U.S. news media, have reported the important news about that meeting in May: the Bush administration is going to New York not to strengthen the NPT, but to destroy it.
Do you want to know why? You could study every news outlet in the USA and not get an answer. You have to go to Japan, where the Kyodo News Agency reported a few days ago: “The United States plans to suggest that a 2005 international conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should invalidate a document adopted at a 2000 meeting in which five nuclear powers committed to an “unequivocal undertaking’ to a nuclear-free world, according to U.S. government and congressional sources.”
In other words, the U.S. wants to scrap the very heart of the NPT, the deal that says if all you non-nuclear nations stay that way, we nuclear nations will move steadily toward getting rid of our nukes. If the treaty were permanent, we’d be stuck with that deal. That’s why the U.S., under the Clinton administration, insisted that the treaty be reviewed and subject to change every five years.
Now the Bushies are planning, not merely to change it, but to make it meaningless.
[...]
The NPT is an international treaty signed by the president and ratified by the Senate. Most of us thought that made it law. How silly of us. It’s not “a binding guideline or anything like that,” the anonymous official explained. The idea that the U.S. should move toward nuclear disarmament is now “outdated,” so it must go.
[...]
Now that no other country has nuclear capability even remotely close to ours, why should we let all those little countries tell us what nukes we can or cannot have? When George W. was planning the invasion of Afghanistan, he reportedly said: “At some point, we may be the only ones left [in the coalition]. That’s okay with me. We are America.” No doubt his attitude about nukes is pretty much the same.
[...]
All this fits the Bush pattern of nuclear irresponsibility, which Lawrence Korb recently described in the Boston Globe. In the last four years, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, kept the Senate from ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, refused to commit itself to halting future tests, and began work on two new nuclear weapons.
[...]
“A U.S. government official described the final accord adopted during the 2000 NPT review conference as a “simply historical document’ and pointed out the need to adopt a new document reflecting drastic changes in international security conditions, including the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.”
That's right, folks. 9/11 changed everything. Bush hit the trifecta.
Summaries on recent nuclear weapons and arms control issues here.
Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation
Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
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