"It is 63 years since mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the nuclear age. The attacks on the two cities are now solemnly commemorated on 6 and 9 August, when the two city mayors issue their messages calling on the world to disarm, messages as necessary as they are certain to be ignored by the powers.
The five nuclear club members, led by the single super-power, refuse to carry out their obligation under the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (actually an abolition treaty) to demolish their arsenals. At the most recent, five year, review meeting of the organization in 2005, they insisted that the function of the treaty be confined to blocking outsiders, other than those such as Israel, India and Pakistan to whom de facto honorary membership has been extended, from admission. The NNPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) becomes the NPPT (Nuclear Privilege Protection Treaty).
Super-powers and regional powers alike, unable to envisage their security without nuclear weapons, will therefore politely acknowledge but ignore the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Declarations. In the teeth of powerful citizen opposition, the British Labour government has already decided to maintain (renew) its Trident nuclear submarine-based “deterrent” into at least the mid 21st century...."
read Gavan McCormack on nuclear proliferation in full here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment