Dr. Strangelove’s Dream
Published in Le Monde
(France) on 3 May 2010
by Michel Rocard and Georges Le Guelte (link to original)
It was enough for disarmament to be mentioned, even without any measure being taken towards that end, for the nuclear arms lobby to jump in. A new element had just been added to old arguments of the last fifty years. February 11, in the United States a missile fired from a sea platform was intercepted by an airborne laser. That is an exceptional technical feat which one could compare to that of a basketball player calling a basket from a distance of 800 kilometers. It would be a turning point in history, and would significantly alter strategic thinking.
We can appreciate the sports performance of the athlete without judging to what point it constitutes a practical barricade against a nuclear aggressor. According to the news in the public domain, the intercepted missile was a Scud, a liquid propulsion missile, slow enough, with a weak range, that the laser could destroy it at a maximum distance of 600 kilometers. At the present juncture, it plays out as a defense of the theatre against tactical missiles.
The United States had already used similar defenses during the Gulf War, in 1991. Against the Scud of Saddam Hussein, they had put to use many lighter, cheaper techniques, which they have, it appears, much improved in 20 years. The airborne laser could protect the United States against the hypothetical devices in Canada or Mexico, or an oceanic zone close to their coasts, and penetrating dozens of kilometers into American territory. No one could say if, in the future, it would be capable of defending against a more likely offensive.
It transpired, in reality, as the last incarnation of a story begun in the 1960s. It’s the continuation of the “Sentinel” project of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon’s “Safeguard,” Ronald Reagan’s “Strategic Defensive Initiative,” “Brilliant Pebbles” of George H. Bush, or more recently, “Antimissile Shield” of George W. Bush. For a half-century, American researchers, pushed by the aerospace industry and by the ultra-conservatives, have been trying to find the philosopher’s stone that would allow them to annihilate their enemies without risking reprisals. Each of these projects was abandoned after having costs tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.
Fortunately, the Europeans never let themselves be convinced by all those who pressured them to imitate the American industry, or to sell them their devices. They did not readily accept the idea that, to be powerful, a state must dedicate a certain percentage of its GDP to its armament, even if it is to buy useless arms known for winning the last war. In principle, a politic of defense does not have, for its essential objective, the realization of the dreams of some researchers, nor satisfying the shareholders of the armament industry.
For the story to be complete, one must add that it was exactly one year ago, in April 2009, that the American secretary of defense, Robert Gates, decided to construct just one lone airborne laser, the one that achieved the February 11 interception. The rest of the program will be dedicated to research. His decision was not founded on defeatism or the will to leave his country diminished in the face of an aggression, but on the exorbitant cost of the system, and on the technical uncertainties which surround it. That is wisdom. Rather than give free course to the fantasies of the Drs. Strangelove for them to attempt to find remedies to the dangers they have created, it is better to try to prevent them.
The basketball player scored a 3-pointer, but it’s not a Copernican Revolution. It’s too bad, for if an undefeatable defense existed, one could hope that nuclear arms would be eliminated: that was Ronald Reagan’s logic, anyway. That is, it seems, a heavy mistake, and Bonaparte, François de Rose, Pierre Marie Gallois, Lucien Poirier, Clausewitz, Raymond Aron and Dante are convened to testify that the success of the airborne laser only makes nuclear arsenals less dispensable. It amounts to not losing the missiles market while trying to win the antimissile market.
At the risk of seeming mundane, it must be repeated that, even with the most effective antimissile defense, the existence of a nuclear weapon implies that it could be used. Unfortunately, the talk is but a half-truth. The possession of nuclear arms carries risks, and the more detonators are built, the bigger the possibility that they will be used. In fact, nothing ensures that all the heads of state will continue to act in a rational fashion, that they will always exactly predict the reactions of their adversaries, that not one of them will ever act out of their fear. Nothing says that no political director will ever choose suicide rather than renounce his objectives, or that no fanatical group will ever take power in a country equipped with arms. Nothing guarantees that there will never be human error, technical difficulties or an accident.
More and more, the world retreats from the thought patterns of the Cold War. China, for its part, is very rapidly developing its naval fleet, and if France should take another country as a model, it is undoubtedly this one she should take. In the years to come, our interests will be more likely engaged in the defense of the means of naval communication than in a Star War against North Korea.
On our watch, the evolution of the structure of the economy is leading to a capitulation of the functions of the nation-state. That reduces the risks of interstate wars, all while feeding interior tensions within a country itself, hunger riots, the possibility of civil wars, lawless zones, states of anarchy, the multiplication of armed bands, of piracy, the taking of hostages and trafficking of all sorts.
These are the situations we face today and which we’ll face in the future. The nuclear weapon is not adapted to it and, according to the words of George W. Bush (but that was in 2000, so when he was campaigning for presidential election), “these unneeded weapons are the expensive relics of dead conflicts." And he recommended a unilateral reduction of the American arsenal. He did not, however, remain in history as a memory of a pacifist at all turns, or of an antinuclear fanatic.
Useless, the nuclear weapon continues to run the risk to the planet of a collective suicide. There are 22 or 23,000 warheads in the world, of which the capacity for destruction theoretically matches that of 1.5 to 2 tons of dynamite for each human. At the end of the 1960s, five countries possessed weapons; there are nine today: the risk of use is therefore almost twice what it was 50 years ago. Five other states have the means to build a weapon if they decide to. We must put an end date to that evolution, and to reach it, there is no other solution than to totally eliminate nuclear arsenals. One can object that it is ill-timed, since North Korea has just detonated a device, and Iran seems to want to imitate them.
However, if all the big powers decide to renounce their arsenals, they will not tolerate other countries conserving theirs. France could contribute significantly to this movement, and play a very active role in a coalition in which she would meet with her European partners and all the other countries that call for a total nuclear disarmament.
The current politic is that of an obstinate denial of nuclear disarmament, justified by a falsely reassuring discourse which furnishes all the proliferators with arguments. It gives the impression that its essential objective is to conserve, at any price, a useless and dangerous means of obsolete destruction, for reasons which have nothing to do with the security of a country and of its population.
--------------------------
Michel Rocard is a former Prime Minister
Georges Le Guelte is a former Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), author of "Nuclear Arms: Myths and Realities," (Southern Actes 2009).
We can appreciate the sports performance of the athlete without judging to what point it constitutes a practical barricade against a nuclear aggressor. According to the news in the public domain, the intercepted missile was a Scud, a liquid propulsion missile, slow enough, with a weak range, that the laser could destroy it at a maximum distance of 600 kilometers. At the present juncture, it plays out as a defense of the theatre against tactical missiles.
The United States had already used similar defenses during the Gulf War, in 1991. Against the Scud of Saddam Hussein, they had put to use many lighter, cheaper techniques, which they have, it appears, much improved in 20 years. The airborne laser could protect the United States against the hypothetical devices in Canada or Mexico, or an oceanic zone close to their coasts, and penetrating dozens of kilometers into American territory. No one could say if, in the future, it would be capable of defending against a more likely offensive.
It transpired, in reality, as the last incarnation of a story begun in the 1960s. It’s the continuation of the “Sentinel” project of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon’s “Safeguard,” Ronald Reagan’s “Strategic Defensive Initiative,” “Brilliant Pebbles” of George H. Bush, or more recently, “Antimissile Shield” of George W. Bush. For a half-century, American researchers, pushed by the aerospace industry and by the ultra-conservatives, have been trying to find the philosopher’s stone that would allow them to annihilate their enemies without risking reprisals. Each of these projects was abandoned after having costs tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.
Fortunately, the Europeans never let themselves be convinced by all those who pressured them to imitate the American industry, or to sell them their devices. They did not readily accept the idea that, to be powerful, a state must dedicate a certain percentage of its GDP to its armament, even if it is to buy useless arms known for winning the last war. In principle, a politic of defense does not have, for its essential objective, the realization of the dreams of some researchers, nor satisfying the shareholders of the armament industry.
For the story to be complete, one must add that it was exactly one year ago, in April 2009, that the American secretary of defense, Robert Gates, decided to construct just one lone airborne laser, the one that achieved the February 11 interception. The rest of the program will be dedicated to research. His decision was not founded on defeatism or the will to leave his country diminished in the face of an aggression, but on the exorbitant cost of the system, and on the technical uncertainties which surround it. That is wisdom. Rather than give free course to the fantasies of the Drs. Strangelove for them to attempt to find remedies to the dangers they have created, it is better to try to prevent them.
The basketball player scored a 3-pointer, but it’s not a Copernican Revolution. It’s too bad, for if an undefeatable defense existed, one could hope that nuclear arms would be eliminated: that was Ronald Reagan’s logic, anyway. That is, it seems, a heavy mistake, and Bonaparte, François de Rose, Pierre Marie Gallois, Lucien Poirier, Clausewitz, Raymond Aron and Dante are convened to testify that the success of the airborne laser only makes nuclear arsenals less dispensable. It amounts to not losing the missiles market while trying to win the antimissile market.
At the risk of seeming mundane, it must be repeated that, even with the most effective antimissile defense, the existence of a nuclear weapon implies that it could be used. Unfortunately, the talk is but a half-truth. The possession of nuclear arms carries risks, and the more detonators are built, the bigger the possibility that they will be used. In fact, nothing ensures that all the heads of state will continue to act in a rational fashion, that they will always exactly predict the reactions of their adversaries, that not one of them will ever act out of their fear. Nothing says that no political director will ever choose suicide rather than renounce his objectives, or that no fanatical group will ever take power in a country equipped with arms. Nothing guarantees that there will never be human error, technical difficulties or an accident.
More and more, the world retreats from the thought patterns of the Cold War. China, for its part, is very rapidly developing its naval fleet, and if France should take another country as a model, it is undoubtedly this one she should take. In the years to come, our interests will be more likely engaged in the defense of the means of naval communication than in a Star War against North Korea.
On our watch, the evolution of the structure of the economy is leading to a capitulation of the functions of the nation-state. That reduces the risks of interstate wars, all while feeding interior tensions within a country itself, hunger riots, the possibility of civil wars, lawless zones, states of anarchy, the multiplication of armed bands, of piracy, the taking of hostages and trafficking of all sorts.
These are the situations we face today and which we’ll face in the future. The nuclear weapon is not adapted to it and, according to the words of George W. Bush (but that was in 2000, so when he was campaigning for presidential election), “these unneeded weapons are the expensive relics of dead conflicts." And he recommended a unilateral reduction of the American arsenal. He did not, however, remain in history as a memory of a pacifist at all turns, or of an antinuclear fanatic.
Useless, the nuclear weapon continues to run the risk to the planet of a collective suicide. There are 22 or 23,000 warheads in the world, of which the capacity for destruction theoretically matches that of 1.5 to 2 tons of dynamite for each human. At the end of the 1960s, five countries possessed weapons; there are nine today: the risk of use is therefore almost twice what it was 50 years ago. Five other states have the means to build a weapon if they decide to. We must put an end date to that evolution, and to reach it, there is no other solution than to totally eliminate nuclear arsenals. One can object that it is ill-timed, since North Korea has just detonated a device, and Iran seems to want to imitate them.
However, if all the big powers decide to renounce their arsenals, they will not tolerate other countries conserving theirs. France could contribute significantly to this movement, and play a very active role in a coalition in which she would meet with her European partners and all the other countries that call for a total nuclear disarmament.
The current politic is that of an obstinate denial of nuclear disarmament, justified by a falsely reassuring discourse which furnishes all the proliferators with arguments. It gives the impression that its essential objective is to conserve, at any price, a useless and dangerous means of obsolete destruction, for reasons which have nothing to do with the security of a country and of its population.
--------------------------
Michel Rocard is a former Prime Minister
Georges Le Guelte is a former Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), author of "Nuclear Arms: Myths and Realities," (Southern Actes 2009).
All fine and dandy except for one small but rather important detail: the Star Wars system doesn’t work as advertised. It’s a total sham. Its real goal is to siphon billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into the coffins of the companies who together with the Pentagon are the famous military-industrial complex that their president WARNED against 50 years ago.
All those so called “successful” tests only work because the rockets have a guidance system installed on them and hey it’s rather easy to hit a target when it’s got a beacon attached to it.
The truth is totally different:
Iraq had no weapons of mass distraction. Iran doesnt either. North Korea is starving to death; they are only posturing and aren’t any type of real threat to USA or anybody.
Yet USA keeps on spending billions protecting itself against imaginary enemies. No wonder USA is the ONLY “developed” country in the world without health care for its citizens. What a total scam.
Once again, an analysis of nuclear weapons that totally skips the obvious, and is therefore fatally flawed: non-missile delivery of anonymous nuclear or radiological weapons, by state or non-state means, for which there is no rational response.
All that is needed is a tramp freighter, of which there are hundreds. I leave the rest to fiction writers.
The closest this article comes to sanity is the statement implying that nation-states are losing their raison d’etre. We need international government now and we needed it two hundred years ago. Follow-up on the evolution of planetary government is sorely lacking.