By Kaleem Omar

It would be one thing if it were Canada, say, or Belgium or Sri Lanka or any of the other countries that don't have nuclear weapons that was raising a hue and cry against nuclear proliferation. It is another matter altogether when the nuclear non-proliferation lobby is led by the United States, a country which possesses enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity several times over.

For the US to talk of non-proliferation is ranked as the hypocrisy of the highest order, suggesting as it does that while it's somehow okay for the US to have thousands of nuclear weapons, and even to rattle its nuclear sabres (as Lt. General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, did recently when he warned Iran not to underestimate American air power), it's not okay for countries like North Korea or Iran to have even two or three nuclear weapons.

Coming from the US, talk of non-proliferation is like Atilla the Hun or Ivan the Terrible lecturing people on the virtues of non-violence. To compound US hypocrisy on the proliferation issue, no American government has ever censured Israel, or threatened it with sanctions, let alone with military action, for developing a nuclear arsenal that now comprises more than 200 nuclear weapons, including hydrogen bombs.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has weapons of mass destruction. Yet so influential is the Jewish lobby in Washington that Israel continues to be the world's biggest recipient of US military and economic aid, currently running at close to $ 4 billion a year. Over the last 20 years, Israel has received more than $ 100 billion in US aid, most of it in the form of outright grants that do not have to be repaid.

US assistance has helped Israel to become the fourth-strongest military power in the world (after the United States, Russia and China). Moreover, the US's unstinting diplomatic support for Israel's actions against the beleaguered Palestinian people has emboldened Tel Aviv to continue its barbaric policies of repression against them, including building a 300-km-long, 40-feet high wall (nicknamed the "New Berlin Wall") to seal off the Palestinian West Bank from the outside world, in defiance of world public opinion and in flagrant violation of an International Court of Justice ruling in July 2004 ordering Israel to immediately dismantle the barrier.

More than 4,000 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, have been killed by Israeli troops since the Intifada against Israeli occupation of Palestinian land began on September 29, 2000. In turning a blind eye to all this, the US has created a tidal wave of anti-American feeling in countries around the world. The State Department's list of no-go countries for US citizens intending to travel abroad now numbers 160, including even Iceland.

More than any other factor, it is Washington's blatantly one-sided pro-Israel policies that have led to the rise in terrorist attacks against US targets in recent years. If Washington were to make its Middle East policy more even-handed and pressure Israel into withdrawing from occupied Palestinian land, most of the terrorist attacks against US targets would likely cease.

The problem of the growing hatred for the United States in many parts of the world has been compounded by the Bush administration's utterly illegal and unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq. The US's security lies not in building more nuclear weapons but in making its foreign policy more responsive and more sympathetic to the plight of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

More than 128,000 nuclear warheads have been built since the United States conducted the world's first nuclear test in 1945. All but 2% of these warheads have been built by the United States (55% or 70,000) and Russia (43% or 55,000).
The Cold War ended nearly fifteen years ago. Yet the US and Russia still have a total of 28,800 intact nuclear warheads in their stockpiles - more than enough to unleash Armageddon on an unsuspecting world.

Arms control, once a keystone of American foreign policy, has fallen out of favour with many US policymakers, especially since George W. Bush moved into the White House and became a puppet in the hands of the neo-conservative hawks surrounding him.

Yet arms control is needed more than ever, as is evident from the fact that US military spending, under the Bush administration, has soared to record levels in recent years, fueled by spending on the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq war has already cost American taxpayers more than $ 200 billion, with US military costs there currently running at over $ 4 billion a month. That makes the US's war against Iraq the most expensive war in the world since the US's war against Vietnam in the 1960s and early '70s.

Not only is the Iraq war costing huge sums of money, it is also a war that is totally illegal, unprovoked and unjustified. The Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq in flagrant violation of every canon of international law and in defiance of world public opinion - under the flimsy excuse that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and posed "an imminent threat to the national security of the United States" (Bush's words).

In fact, Iraq posed no threat whatsoever to the mighty United States, nor did it possess any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No such weapons or even any evidence of a WMD programme have been found in Iraq despite a fifteen-month search by a 1,400-member team of US inspectors led by David Kay. After Kay resigned earlier this year, he stated publicly that there were no WMD in Iraq. Not for nothing are those alleged WMD now known as "weapons of mass disappearance."
At $ 450 billion in US fiscal year 2005 (which commenced on October 1, 2004), American military spending now accounts for more than 50% of annual world military spending. In other words, US military spending alone is now more than the military spending of the 190 other UN member countries put together.

Yet Bush continues to talk of "peace" and of bringing "democracy" to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. China's Chairman leader Mao once famously remarked that "power flows from the barrel of a gun." Could it be that Bush thinks that democracy, too, flows from the barrel of a gun?

Back in the mid-1990s, US President Bill Clinton said in a State of the Union address to Congress that US nuclear missiles were "no longer pointed at Russian children." So who are they pointed at, then? It stands to reason that they must be pointed at somebody. Or are we to take it that they are now "rogue" missiles that could hit children at random anywhere in the world?

The same question could be asked of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Assuming that his country's nuclear missiles are no longer pointed at American children, who are they pointed at now? The rest of the world's children or what?

In other words, has the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (or MAD) that was so popular among hawkish circles in Washington and Moscow during the Cold War years, now been replaced by a sort of doctrine of "Randomly Assured Destruction" - with neither the US nor Russia but the non-nuclear countries of the world as the target?

In this context, the only difference between the US and Russia is that, unlike Washington, Moscow at least doesn't lecture would-be nuclear countries like North Korea and Iran about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, or threaten them with economic sanctions or military action in the event of their going nuclear. Which makes Russia less of a hypocrite than the United States.

That may not count for much in the overall scheme of things, but at least we don't have to face the prospect of a Russia armed-to-the-teeth with nuclear weapons warning other countries against going nuclear.

Unlike the Bush administration with its "Axis of Evil" rhetoric and its sabre-rattling warnings to Iran and North Korea of dire consequences if they continue to press ahead with their nuclear weapons programmes, the Putin government has taken a low-key approach to the nuclear proliferation issue, preferring quiet diplomacy over the bellicose posture adopted by the neo-conservative hawks in Washington.

The six-party talks in September 2004 were the last chance before the US presidential election of November 2 to test whether diplomacy could roll back North Korea's nuclear programme. Few expected the talks to succeed, and, to no one's surprise, they didn't. Meanwhile, North Korea is moving steadily towards a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, including long-range ballistic missiles.

In attempting to deal with the North Korea issue, the Bush administration dithered for so long that its partners in the talks - China, Russia, Japan and South Korea - began to take matters into their own hands. Faced with losing control, in June 2004 the Bush administration finally started talking specifics. That didn't break the logjam, but it was a step in the right direction.

According to some US commentators, the six-party talks shouldn't be written off and a modest amount of hope is even justified. If the statements of the parties are taken at face value, there is some convergence on long-term goals: A Korean peninsula that is permanently free of nuclear weapons; a peace system that replaces the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War; normal diplomatic relations between all the six parties, including the United States and North Korea; an intention not to use force in their mutual relations; elimination of all barriers to trade to facilitate the economic development of North Korea; and the establishment of a permanent regional security mechanism.

However, as James E. Goodbye, a senior fellow at the Centre for Northeast Asian Policy Studies in Washington, and Donald G. Gross, a senior counsel at the Washington-based law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, noted in a recent article in the International Herald Tribune: "Several difficult obstacles will have to be overcome to begin making progress towards these goals. Negotiating an elaborate treaty would take time. Yet in this nuclear crisis, time is not on anyone's side."

Goodbye and Gross argue that "a better approach than seeking a formal treaty at the outset would be to agree to the next round of six-party talks on a statement of common goals and to adopt the model the Bush administration relied on to eliminate Libya's nuclear programme. The administration has favourably cited this model as a basis for making diplomatic progress in North Korea."

The essence of the Libyan model is to proceed through "reciprocal unilateral measures" - independent actions taken by parties to the negotiations to reach their shared objectives. Goodbye and Gross argue that: "A formal treaty is not a requirement. This process leaves to each participant some discretion in what it actually does. It is the model the Bush administration preferred in the case of Russia, as well as Libya."

What reciprocal unilateral measures might be involved? As Goodbye and Gross note, the discussions in the six-party talks suggest the following steps, over time:
North Korea would: 1) dismantle all its nuclear facilities and place constraints on its missile programmes, agreeing to monitoring measures; 2) acknowledge and end all technical programmes that could be used to enrich uranium; 3) withdraw troops from the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea and reduce its forces.

The United States would: 1) reduce its deployment of troops on the Korean Peninsula, as it is now doing (the current number of such troops in 40,000); 2) provide security assurances; 3) eliminate remaining trade barriers; 4) normalise diplomatic relations with North Korea; 5) provide energy and economic aid.
South Korea would: 1) implement the economic assistance it has promised to North Korea for ending its nuclear programme; 2) initiate confidence-building measures to lower tensions on the peninsula.

Japan would: 1) provide North Korea with promised reparations for the Japanese occupation of North Korea during World War II; 2) take actions to foster economic development in North Korea. China and Russia could undertake additional measures in response to North Korea's decision to dismantle its nuclear facilities.

North Korea's nuclear programmes reportedly are more advanced than Libya's were, and piecemeal dismantlement may be the only practical way to proceed. Goodbye and Gross argue that: "If a denuclearised North Korea is truly accepted as a common strategic objective, Kim Jong Il should be able to begin the process by taking some significant action, while reciprocal unilateral actions by other participants would keep the ball rolling toward achievement of the goal."

But the issue of denuclearising a nuclearised North Korea, while it has security and economic implications for the region, pales into insignificance when it is compared with the vastly bigger and far more complex issue of denuclearising the United States and Russia, the world's two biggest nuclear powers by far.

The US has 10,729 intact nuclear warheads (274 warheads are awaiting dismantlement). It has approximately 7,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons and about 1,600 tactical nuclear weapons. Component parts for another nearly 5,000 nuclear weapons form part of the US "strategic reserve" or plutonium pits.
Not content with this, the Bush administration last year launched a programme to build more nuclear weapons. These will be tactical nukes known as "bunker busters." At the administration's urging, Congress has already approved millions of dollars in funding for the programme, and the US's main nuclear-warheads manufacturing facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico, has been given the go-ahead to begin production.

Russia, which, like the United States, also possesses the capability to wipe out humanity several times over, still has 8,400 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal. It has approximately 5,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons and about 3,400 tactical nuclear weapons. It's total tactical arsenal is said to comprise as many as 10,000-plus nuclear weapons.

Under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (START II) between Moscow and Washington, the US had committed to reduce the number of its strategic nuclear weapons by 50 per cent to 3,500 by the year 2003, while Russia had committed to reduce the number of its strategic nuclear weapons to 3,000 by the same year. But neither the US nor Russia have lived up to their START II commitments and no reduction has taken place in their pre-START II stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons.

A ceiling of 1,500 to 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons has been suggested as the ceiling for the US and Russia under the START III agreement. But with even the reductions under the START II agreement still not implemented, the possibility of the START III cuts being implemented looks increasingly remote. Under the Treaty of Moscow (also known as SORT) signed by US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002, a maximum number of between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed strategic nuclear weapons are supposed to remain in the US and Russian arsenals by 2012. Whether this target will be achieved remains to be seen.

But this target is misleading. Even if the reductions laid out in the Treaty of Moscow are completed by transferring warheads from active delivery vehicles to either a "responsive force" or to "inactive reserve," United States will still retain 10,000 nuclear warheads in 2012, essentially the same number as today. Under this arrangement, the US's "active" nuclear force would consist of approximately 3,500 warheads (500 ICBM plus 1,680 SLBM plus 1,376 bombers).

Between 1940 and 1995, the United States spent $ 3.5 trillion to fight a nuclear war. Even today, 15 years after the Cold War ended, the US spends $ 27 billion a year to fight a nuclear war. The cost of one US B-2 bomber (21 were authorised by Congress) is $ 2.2 billion. The lifecycle cost of each B-2 bomber (Research, Development, Technology & Engineering, procurement, operations, maintenance and support) is $ 2.5 billion, at current prices. In an address to the American people on July 26, 1963, on the Limited Test Ban Treaty agreed between the United States and Russia, US President John F. Kennedy said: "A full scale nuclear exchange (between the US and Russia), lasting less than 60 minutes...could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors - as Chairman Khrushchev warned - 'the survivors would envy the dead,' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors."