JONATHAN POWER
America's blind-eye to N-armsIN HIS forthcoming memoir on the India-Pakistan nuclear relationship, Strobe Talbott, a former US deputy secretary of state, recounts the surprise and alarm that swept the eighth floor of the State Department on May 11, 1998, when the first reports came in over CNN that India had tested a nuclear weapon.
One presumes the diplomats were reading the Indian press carefully. For example, I have in front of me two articles, dated April 8 and 15, 1998, from the influential Indian daily The Statesman maintainin that since the nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party had come to power, India was going nuclear quickly. The information was around for those who had eyes and ears. It was as if Washington didn't want to know. Similarly, the reports emerging today suggesting that Saudi Arabia may be the latest Middle Eastern country to engage in a research program on nuclear weapons recalls a report of the International Institute for Strategic Studies published as long ago as 1989. This London-based body remarked on the then-recent Saudi purchase of Chinese CSS-2 rockets: "Missiles of such range are difficult to justify unless they carry nuclear weapons." "They are too elaborate and expensive to make sense for anything else," I was told at the time. "Controllable thrust engines, inertial guidance systems, and heat shielding put up the cost to astronomical levels." But Washington didn't want to know. It still doesn't. Not one senior administration figure is talking about Saudi Arabian nuclear weapons research despite the new and worrisome intelligence reports. It is the same with US policy toward Israel's large stock of nuclear weapons. Until recently the United States would not confirm on the record what everybody knew -- that Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons. Washington prefers, when that is its immediate strategic interest (even if not its long-term one), to put the telescope to its blind eye. It couldn't allow itself to be too agitated about India's nuclear research because it had kept quiet for so long about that of Pakistan, its close ally. When the Soviet Army poured into Afghanistan during the Carter administration, the United States suspended its nuclear nonproliferation policy so Pakistan was sanctions-free and could receive the military and economic aid the United States wanted it to have. Yet everyone knew that Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons capability at a fast rate. And today we know that Pakistan's chief nuclear weapons scientist was running a side-show, selling nuclear technology and equipment far and wide -- to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and now, intelligence sources say, a "fourth customer," which can only be Saudi Arabia. How can Washington be a credible force for antiproliferation when this is the recent historical record: doing little or nothing until too late? Talbott gives a hair-raising ringside view of the Indian-Pakistani nuclear crisis of 1999. He reports that President Clinton thought it brought the antagonists closer to nuclear war than the United States and the Soviet Union were at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. We know, too, that when Saudi Arabia bought these Chinese missiles in 1988, Israel was nervous enough to warn Saudi Arabia that it would engage in a preemptive nuclear strike if it ever had cause for suspicion they would be used against it. Some close observers are still convinced that only US pressure stayed the Israeli hand in the very nervous March and April of 1988. (Saudi Arabia, for its part, attempted to reassure Israel by saying it acquired the rockets for defense against Iran, not Israel.) It is difficult for Washington to rally international opinion behind a hard line on nuclear nonproliferation in North Korea and Iran when its recent past performance is so ambiguous and inconsistent. The Bush administration's credibility is further undermined by its actions in securing "loose nukes" and near-nukes in Russia. Harvard professor Graham Allison describes the attitude of the Group of Eight industrialized nations toward this issue as "lackadaisical and unfocused." Despite agreement in principle with Russia to work together on the issue, less plutonium and highly enriched uranium have been secured in the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, than the two years before. President Bush does not give the issue his personal involvement. Meanwhile, at home, rather than setting a good example by freezing weapons development, the administration is seeking an increase in research funding for two new kinds of nuclear weapons. Is hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue? If so, where do we go from here? Is the sauce that is good for the goose not good for the gander?
Jonathan Power is a columnist based in London. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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