Nuclear Chauvinism: Time to dust off those 'duck and cover' films

[G_j]

Nuclear Chauvinism Bites

by Michael Klare, The Nation

Time to dust off those 'duck and cover' films: the U.S. double standards on nonproliferation don't make us safer.


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041011&s=klare

Nonproliferation--the global campaign to prevent the further spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons--must be applied in a nondiscriminatory fashion to be effective. But the Bush Administration has been using nonproliferation policy to demonize foreign governments it doesn't like and to manipulate US public opinion. The most egregious example was the totally discredited claim that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of manufacturing nuclear weapons--a claim used to manufacture support for the US invasion of Iraq.

Another example is the charge, made in 2002 by John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for nonproliferation, that Cuba had an offensive biological-warfare program. Many analysts viewed this claim as a thinly veiled effort to attract support among anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in the pivotal state of Florida. On September 17 the White House circulated a new intelligence estimate indicating that Cuba possesses a limited capacity to manufacture biological warfare munitions but is not known to be currently doing so.

The crisis over Iran's nuclear activities has been gaining steam since last fall, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Iran had undertaken a previously undisclosed effort to "enrich" natural uranium--that is, increase the proportion of the fissionable U-235 isotope in its total content. The Iranians insisted that these efforts were intended to manufacture fuel for civilian power reactors, but US officials, led by Bolton, claimed they were part of a covert Iranian bomb project. Washington immediately sought to punish Iran by bringing the matter before the United Nations Security Council, which is empowered under the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to impose sanctions on signatory states (Iran signed in 1968) that violate its provisions. But the major European powers, led by France, Britain and Germany, prevailed on the IAEA's board of governors to engage in negotiations with Tehran aimed at averting a crisis. In October 2003 Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment activities in return for a European pledge to provide advanced technology for its civilian nuclear-power program.

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