Why Do Nations
Want Nuclear Weapons?
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
On US urging, the European
Union is trying to rein in Iran’s nuclear
weapons program by offering to support its civil
nuclear-energy program, provided uranium enrichment
is suspended. Nevertheless, Iran is carrying on
with its plans to restart processing uranium at
a plant in Isfahan.
Similarly, China and five other nations are trying
to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program.
But North Korea has rejected the fourth draft
agreement that would have provided it with electricity,
food, economic and security guarantees in return
for scrapping its nuclear program.
One can understand why the terrorists, who attach
no value to human life, including their own, want
one. But why do nations want such weapons of mass
destruction? Everyone who is observing the 60th
anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki agrees that they are a bad idea.
Yet the world is awash in nuclear weapons. According
to Richard Rhodes, Russia tops the list with 16,000
warheads and the US comes in second with 10,000.
China, France and China collectively account for
another 1,000, followed by Israel with 200. India
and Pakistan together are estimated to have between
50 to 100 warheads and North Korea may have six
to eight.
There are three reasons why nations cling to nuclear
weapons. The first is purely military. Even though
every politician says they have no military value,
they have some perceived value as a deterrent.
A North Korean official told a US Congressional
delegation in June 2003 that “our purpose
in having a deterrent is related to the war in
Iraq.”
Pakistan wants them to ward off an Indian attack.
Many credit Pakistan’s possession of nuclear
weapons to India’s inability to mount even
a limited war in 2002. India’s generals
couldn’t guarantee to their civilian masters
that Pakistan would not carry out a nuclear strike
in case of an Indian attack, since General Musharraf
had made it very clear that even an attack in
Kashmir would be regarded as an attack on Pakistan.
He reinforced the message by firing three ballistic
missiles in May, causing then Indian defense minister
George Fernandes to say that India was not threatening
the sovereignty of Pakistan.
India developed its program after China exploded
a bomb in 1964, just two years after defeating
India militarily in the northeastern Himalayas.
China went nuclear to ward off an attack by the
USSR and, of course, the USSR went nuclear to
ward off an attack by the US.
Somewhere along the way, Britain and France got
them to ward off a Soviet invasion. Israel got
them to ward off an Arab attack and came close
to using them during the October 1973 war.
Since American’s decision to nuke two Japanese
cities sixty years ago appears to have triggered
a chain reaction, a historical flashback is in
order. Why did President Harry Truman bomb Hiroshima
and Nagasaki? Some say it was done to compel a
Japanese surrender. There is no question the war
ended after the second bomb was dropped but what
if Japan had not surrendered? Would a third have
been dropped? If the Japanese were truly willing
to fight to the last man in the face of a ground
assault and inflict a million casualties, as some
have argued, why did they fold so quickly?
Stanford historian David Kennedy says President
Harry Truman “regarded the bomb as a military
weapon and never had any doubt that it should
be used.” Neither did Winston Churchill
“hear the slightest suggestion that we should
do otherwise.”
Arguing that President Truman’s main aim
had been to end the war with Japan, King’s
College historian Lawrence Freedman adds that
the bombing may not have been militarily justified.
President Dwight Eisenhower, who was the Allied
commander in Europe during the war, stated in
a 1963 Newsweek interview that “the Japanese
were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary
to hit them with that awful thing.” Even
Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William
Leahy, stated in his memoirs, “The use of
this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was of no material assistance in our war against
Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and
ready to surrender.”
In his book, “The Bomb: A Life,” Gerard
DeGroot, a professor of modern history at the
University of St. Andrews, believes that Japan
was looking for a way to surrender in June and
July. But there were other considerations, mostly
to do with demonstrating American power, especially
to the Soviet Union.
Using the bomb quickly became a test of patriotism.
He says that for most Manhattan Project scientists
the bomb was a deterrent, not a weapon. Physicist
Leo Szilard had done as much as anyone to try
to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to
develop the bomb because Germany was doing so.
But on the day after that first test, he sent
government officials a petition signed by 69 project
scientists arguing that to use the bomb would
ignite a dangerous arms race and, by damaging
America’s postwar moral position, impair
its ability to control the “forces of destruction.”
The petition was ignored, and Gen. Leslie Groves,
the senior military official in charge of the
project, began making a case that Szilard was
a security risk. It’s a pattern that would
be repeated often.
The bomb ultimately came to be associated with
Great Power status, and that is the second major
reason why nations want the bomb. Britain, a former
great power, is unwilling to let go of its nuclear
arsenal. India, an aspiring great power, sees
them as a ticket for a permanent seat on the UN
Security Council.
The third major reason for nations wanting the
bomb is economic. The bomb is seen as requiring
less overall military expenditure, since it would
allow the size of conventional forces to be reduced.
Of course, there is no evidence that this benefit
has ever been realized, since the acquisition
of nuclear weapons usually triggers a nuclear
arms race. For example, every time India develops
a more advanced delivery vehicle or warhead, it
makes Pakistan feel more insecure about the value
of its deterrent. All nuclear aspirants ignore
the statement by Presidents Ronald Reagan and
Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva at their first summit
in November 1985: a nuclear war “cannot
be won and must never be fought.”
But when nations that are armed to teeth with
nuclear weapons urge others not to acquire them,
their voices fall on deaf ears. Chain-smoking
fathers calling on their teenage sons to quit
smoking don’t carry much credibility either.
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