Is nuke treaty about to implode? by Gordon Prather
Posted: February 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is anathema to the Bush Doctrine, and President Bush wants it modified.
The principal objective of the NPT is to prevent the spread of nukes and nuke technology. NPT signatories that didn't already have nukes promised they wouldn't attempt to beg, borrow, steal or otherwise acquire nukes or nuke technology.
President Bush likes that part of the NPT. But the NPT gives the responsibility for "policing" no-nuke signatories to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the responsibility for "enforcing" non-proliferation to the U.N. Security Council.
President Bush wants to decide for himself who the potential nuke proliferators are, as he did last year with respect to Iraq. He also wants to deal with suspected nuke proliferators himself, as he sees fit. As he did last year with respect to Iraq.
It appears he has now decided that Iran, Libya and North Korea are potential nuke proliferators, and is itching to deal with them the same way he dealt with Iraq.
But by invading and occupying Iraq last year – because he suspected Saddam would acquire nukes if he could – President Bush seriously undercut the authority and effectiveness of the IAEA, the NPT and the U.N. Security Council, itself.
More importantly, President Bush seriously damaged his credibility with Congress. He didn't tell Congress we had to invade Iraq because he suspected Saddam might someday acquire nukes. He told them he had incontravertible "intelligence" that Saddam Hussein either had or would soon have nukes with which to threaten us.
Of course Saddam wasn't a threat to us. And nobody else in the world – except Congress and possibly Tony Blair – believed that he was.
So, Congress probably won't allow the application of the Bush Doctrine to Iran and North Korea. So expect the president to periodically beat IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei about the head and shoulders for failing to find "evidence" of the nuke programs he suspects Iran and North Korea have.
You may be wondering why – after seeing what happened to Iraq – more no-nuke signatories to the NPT don't withdraw, as North Korea did last year in anticipation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Two reasons.
First, here is Section 2 of Article IV of the NPT:
All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.
That section gives Iran, for example, the inalienable right to acquire uranium-enrichment equipment, to enrich uranium with it and then use it or sell it. Or to develop uranium-enrichment equipment indigenously, and to sell that.
Of course, Iran is required by the NPT to subject all such equipment and facilities to the IAEA Safeguards and Physical Security regime. It is then the IAEA's responsibility to ensure that no highly enriched uranium, if produced, is diverted from peaceful purposes to the production of nukes, by Iran or anyone else.
But worse still – from the perspective of President Bush – that NPT section obligates us and the Russians, Brits, French and Chinese to help Iran acquire uranium-enrichment equipment if they want it.
President Bush wants the NPT changed so it prohibits the further proliferation of uranium-enrichment and plutonium-production equipment and technology.
If changed, that would leave only one reason for no-nuke states to remain subject to the NPT.
In Article VI, we promised to get rid of our nukes.
Well, everyone who thinks George Bush will do that, stand on your head.
So, what's to stop a mass exodus of NPT signatories?
Evidently, nothing.
So, what's to stop nuke proliferation?
Well, there's the Bush Doctrine. Quoth the president last week at National Defense University:
Over the last two years, a great coalition has come together to defeat terrorism and to oppose the spread of weapons of mass destruction – the inseparable commitments of the war on terror. We've shown that proliferators can be discovered and can be stopped. We've shown that for regimes that chose defiance, there are serious consequences.
The way ahead is not easy, but it is clear.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
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