The Non-proliferation Debacle Makes Me Want To Build A Shelter

I don't know about anyone else, but today's talk about the scary, bleak and seemingly inevitable fate of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty gave me chills- beyond the normal ones that come from the room being too cold. 

The US is the leader in undermining the NPT.  With the damage done in the last two decades on this issue I doubt that any amount of diplomacy will recreate or inspire the global trust that worldwide non-proliferation requires.  It is in every country's best interest for international nuclear disarmament.  However, when countries, like the US, create policies that are counteractive, we take more than three steps back.  The NPT will only work when we can trust each other- working on the basic principal that it is globally mutually beneficial.  The US has blatantly and unabashedly violated and exploited that trust.  When we will learn to work within international law and treaties in the best interest of everyone?  (and stop pointing fingers at Iran when it's counterproductive and we are doing far worse)

Since the cynic in me distrusts the power of diplomacy on this issue I wonder what sort of re-framing can be done moving forward.  Mr. Mian explained that the high-enriched uranium that is used in nuclear weapons can be diluted to create low-enriched uranium that can be used for nuclear energy- plutonium can also be processed likewise to create energy.  I wonder if as our resource crisis escalates, can begin global disarmarment in the framework of energy creation?  I understand that this may not be beneficial for Russia and some Middle Eastern countries, but for China, the US, UK, etc., this may be able to shape an energy policy that would lend itself to a new sort of global treaty for more responsible use of nuclear materials and re-use of exsisting weaponry.

Nuclear weapons are scary and like global warming can/will affect every person on this planet.  We cannot continue in this inevitably deadly game of hypothetical bombing.

Comments

[Maureen]

"It is in every country's best interest for international nuclear disarmament." The majority agrees! At this point, the world powers including the U.S, China, India, Russia, and any that have nuclear arms are aware of mutually assured destruction. In other words, each country knows they have enough atomic weapons to destroy the other. If Russia used atomic weapons to destroy the U.S, the U.S would have enough time to use weapons and destroy Russia. World leaders with WMDs are aware of the need for restraint.

During WWII the power of proliferation began, sparked by political, and ideological differences. In Europe, German soldiers (numbered by the millions) surrendered because of losing on both fronts. They lost to the allies, including Russia. Their political ideological Nazi Party was defeated. In the Pacific and the 1945 Battle of Okinawa the Japanese soldiers that were fighting for the Emperor Hirohito (considered a living god) died to the last man. Thousand of Kamikaze, or “divine-wind”, pilots crashed planes into American ships, fighting/dying for national and religious purposes.

Today’s war on terrorism with Islamic extremist remains a global issue that all world leaders need to address. Although some Islamic countries are gathering nuclear material to make energy, there are many in the intelligence world that believe WMD is also an underlying reason.
For the Al-Qaeda, Taliban, or any extreme religious group, the game has changed. National interest had been integrated with religious beliefs, and it is not so much for political, ideological reasons as much as it is for fanatic religious ideology. Suicide has become a viable and acceptable wage to warfare. Mutually assured destruction no longer ascertains because the respect for life, national boundaries, and national autonomy has been lost. As a direct correlation to the Kamikaze pilots, the Islamic Jihad committed suicide as they blew up an American embassy.

Externally, I believe it can’t hurt to build up our federal intelligence (NSA, CIA, FBI, homeland security & local agencies), our ports, our boarder, and technology to track radioactive material. However, we need more! Globally, we need to work on initiatives including ending poverty and all the issues that relate, such as health, education, etc. We must work to build consensus on accepting and tolerating diversity of all types. These are preventative steps to nuclear non-proliferation.

[Michaella Holden]

The global nuclear situation also gives me chills.

I certainly understand Mian's answer to my question as to why we have a much stronger concern about China than we do regarding Pakistan. I buy it that China, a rising global power, poses a *systemic* threat - that it is a country that could completely unravel the world order the US has established and re-write it in its own terms. I see that in contrast, Pakistan and radical Islamic terrorists pose the danger of destroying a city or a few cities, which is a narrower security threat than the possibility of China changing the entire world order.

Having said that, it seems odd to me that the threat of wiping out entire cities – of losing thousands of lives – isn’t as great as losing our clout as an international powerhouse. Is our dominance really more valuable than countless human lives? Perhaps in losing our power around the globe we may lose a great deal of national security and in turn, innumerable American lives could be endangered, but it seems it would take quite a lot to get to that point... I recall learning in my study of theatre in undergrad that modern playwrights in the fifties deemed it no longer possible, once we had entered the atomic age, for a play to be a true tragedy. If one can wipe out entire civilizations with the touch of a button, is tragedy in the sense we know it – with guilt, purging, catharsis – actually possible? In the same regard, I wonder, if systemic threats loom more heavily than the threat of targeted nuclear attacks, is it that massive loss of human life is also no longer considered a tragedy?