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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Bush's rattling of nukes
could reignite arms race
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
On the face of it, the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review is no big deal -- what Secretary of State Colin Powell described as simply "sound military conceptual planning" and not a precursor to imminent U.S. nuclear attack.
Any defense department, let alone a nuclear power, would be seriously remiss if it did not have threat assessments and contingency plans for possible wars with real or potential enemies.
China's White Paper on defense policy always lists the United States as its most likely adversary in a war over Taiwan. And Russia, whose nuclear arsenal rivals ours, has always had a list of American cities and military installations that would be targeted in the event of war.
As Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov tried to reassure a jittery Duma, there is "nothing extraordinary about nuclear powers picking targets for possible attack in the event of conflict or crisis."
What Ivanov did question, however, was the "form and timing" of the Pentagon review, parts of which were deliberately leaked to the Los Angeles Times, picked up by The New York Times the next day and, of course, circulated worldwide thereafter. Every nation may have contingency plans for war but they don't usually advertise them.
Powell's assurance "there's less than meets the eye and less than meets the headline to the story" also is somewhat contradicted by the fact that he's had to spend a lot of time doing damage control ever since.
According to what was leaked, the Pentagon has been ordered to draft contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against at least seven countries: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.
Also, it has been told to prepare for the possible use of nuclear weapons in three scenarios: a future Arab-Israeli conflict, to deter or retaliate for chemical or biological weapons attacks, and in response to other "surprising military developments" that presumably include terrorism.
Taken by itself, this suggests a significant shift in Washington's thinking about the circumstances under which nuclear weapons might be used. Combined with President Bush's State of the Union address, it is even more worrisome to friend and foe.
Although Bush's reference to an "axis of evil" -- where he lumped Iran, Iraq and North Korea into one unholy alliance -- earned more headlines, the truly significant part of that speech was his apparent switch of U.S. defense policy from one of military deterrence to pre-emptive strikes at perceived enemies.
"I will not wait on events while dangers gather," said Bush. "I will not stand by as peril draws closer. The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons."
This eagerness to strike first, maybe with nukes, is what everyone is all lathered up about.
William Arkin, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, said the Bush plan "reverses an almost two decade-long trend of relegating nuclear weapons to the category of weapons of last resort."
Darryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association said it "seeks to increase, not decrease, the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign and military policy." And John Isaacs of the Coalition for a Liveable World said Bush is not only "trying to find ways to make nuclear weapons useful but also ways in which we might actually use them."
All worried that this would accelerate, rather than decelerate, nuclear proliferation.
The grimmest warning of all came from Richard Butler, former Australian ambassador to the United Nations and former head of the U.N. commission to disarm Iraq. In Melbourne's The Age newspaper he wrote:
"If the U.S. now cedes the moral ground previously staked out in the policy of nuclear deterrence -- the hallmark of which is no first use of nuclear weapons -- it will fulfill the terrorists' and the outlaws' most demonic picture of the U.S. as a state that preaches probity and restraint to others but reserves complete freedom of action to itself, including the use of nuclear weapons.
"Were this to occur, the previous doctrine of deterrence, mutual assured destruction, would be replaced by unilateral assured destruction American-style. The response would be a runaway nuclear arms race."
March 19, 2002
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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