Nuclear Disarmament: Inconsistencies and Double Standards

On the eve of the meeting between presidents Dmitri Medvedev of Russia and Barack Obama of the United States, to take place in Prague on Thursday, where a new nuclear weapons agreement will be signed to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — signed in 1991 — the United States government presented its Nuclear Posture Review, a document that outlines the guidelines to follow in the handling of its nuclear arsenal. In this text, Washington agrees to respect the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, not to make new nuclear warheads, as well as not to use existing ones against countries that do not possess nuclear weapons; but if circumstances should preclude this, the U.S. agrees to inform the governments of neighboring countries to Iran and North Korea.

The document mentioned contains positive elements, such as the willingness of Washington to lead by example with the dismantling of existing nuclear arsenals. Not to be neglected, nevertheless, is that such announcements coincide with the inability or unwillingness of the Obama government to reverse some belligerent and hostile impulses that characterized his predecessor, constituting a spur to the arms race, as demonstrated with its intention to place an antimissile shield in Romania and Bulgaria, similar to what the president himself had ruled out in the Czech Republic and Poland. In this respect, the response given yesterday by Moscow, whose ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, requested that the United States provide “more details” about its new nuclear policy, is significant. One day earlier, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said his country “has the right to withdraw from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty if a quantitative and qualitative increase in U.S. strategic missile defense significantly influences the effectiveness of Russian strategic nuclear forces.”

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the document explains that a clear warning is posed to the governments of Iran and North Korea — though there is no conclusive evidence that the first enriched uranium was used in the development of weapons of mass destruction — but doesn’t do the same with those governments that have constructed nuclear arsenals with the implicit acceptance of the United States and Western Europe: India, Israel, and Pakistan. The tolerance with which Washington and its allies have behaved toward armament projects of these three nations has led to a process of proliferation and dispersion of atomic weapons that multiplies global tensions, and converts the warning to North Korea and Iran into a double standard.

Moreover, it should be emphasized that Pyongyang’s and Tehran’s programs of nuclear weapons development, which Washington systematically accuses the two countries of having, have inescapable correlates to the hostile behavior of the United States against nations considered “enemies,” and the implementation of the doctrine of “preventative war” in Afghanistan and Iraq by the previous U.S. administration. Paradoxically, today it is clear that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not due to the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein’s government, but rather, the lack of them; this situation makes it logical to suppose that the Iranian and North Korean authorities have at least considered acquiring nuclear weapons to prevent — or at least hinder — possible U.S. military aggression.

With these considerations in mind, the agreement manifested yesterday by the U.S. — which in principle constitutes clear and healthy progress — would have to be accompanied by the end of inconsistency, factionalism, and double standards with which the superpower usually conducts itself in regard to nuclear disarmament.