A bomb anyone?

Nov. 15, 2006

The threat of nuclear proliferation
At the height of the Cold War arms race between the United States and Soviet Union (USSR) there was a well-understood reality called MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. For anyone who fired a nuclear missile, whether from the USSR or the USA, it was well understood that retaliation would obliterate the attacker.
To assure that no surprise attack could prevent retaliation, the United States had nuclear submarines playing hide and seek with the Soviets around the world, ready at any time. Thanks to ELF, the now obsolete and much-protested long-range and low-frequency radio transmission antenna buried in the Upper Peninsula, submarines could be signaled to fire their nuclear missiles at designated cities in the Soviet Union. B52 bombers stationed at K.I. Sawyer airbase were in the air at all times, ready to be directed to targets in the USSR.
Inevitably there were accidents, once in Greenland and once in the sea off the coast of Spain. The Danes continue to fight for restitution for the radiation poisoning from the Greenland crash.
The arms race was an ongoing scenario that was satirized in the classic Cold War film, “Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to Love the Bomb.” Then there’s “On the Beach,” the post apocalyptic film about Australians watching as deadly fallout from a northern hemisphere war crosses the equator to kill everyone with radiation sickness.
Those were movies. The closest we came to the whole business actually falling apart was the Cuban missile crisis in which we came within 30 minutes of the destruction of civilization. For me, then working undercover in Denmark and told to be prepared to evacuate to a neutral country, it was a sobering turning point.

NEW TO THE CLUB
The USSR soon broke the United States’ monopoly on nuclear weapons, thanks to some skillful spying. They exploded their first hydrogen bomb in 1955. The Soviets were followed by the Chinese, whose 100 megaton above-ground nuclear test sent radioactive fallout across the Pacific to the United States. Unfortunately, MAD only worked when the so-called nuclear club was small and the players rational.
France, Britain, and allegedly Israel soon followed with their own arsenals of nuclear weapons.
In 1968, the countries of the world attempted to stop the descent into madness by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The government of Ireland proposed the treaty and the people of Finland were the first to sign. Today, 188 countries are members of the treaty, vowing to never own or develop nuclear weapons. Yet there are also now nine members of the nuclear club.
There were three pillars established by the Non-Proliferation Treaty: First, controlling the spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world; second, disarming the world of these weapons; and third, establishing the right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology.
But there have been leaks through the years. South Africa joined the nuclear club in the ‘70s, but then renounced nuclear weapons. India gained nuclear weapons in 1974 and Pakistan recently joined the club in 1998.
Today, according to Wikepida, Israel (which officially denies owning nuclear weapons) is believed to have a stockpile of 100-200 bombs; India has material to make 150 warheads; and Pakistan reportedly has 60 nuclear bombs.
And now North Korea has tested their own bomb. Libya was persuaded to give up such attempts, but Iran wants to join too.

THE ISLAMIC BOMB
Mutually-Assured Destruction only works when the parties are all rational. But what if the holders of nuclear weapons are not rational, but are religious fanatics who consider martyrdom a ticket to heaven? What if those desperately poor guards who stand outside the old Soviet bunkers full of nukes are overpowered or simply bribed to sell a couple to Islamic terrorists?
To the insane or merely fanatic, it doesn’t matter if a whole country dies if you’ve made your point. MAD works only as long as the consequences are unthinkable. Osama bin Laden has declared that he is willing to kill 10 million Americans on behalf of his fanatical brand of Islam. He’s reputed to be hiding in Pakistan, a country which has a nuclear weapon and a president who has already barely escaped several assassination attempts. One lucky shot and Pakistan could fall to Islamic fanatics.
We’ve all seen documentaries about the first A-Bomb named “Fat Boy.” It was so big that only a B-52 could carry it to Japan. But anyone who has visited the Sandia Nuclear Lab in New Mexico has seen the warheads small enough to fit into a suitcase. One of those can easily be smuggled into any seaport and sailed up the Potomac or the Hudson River. In one shot our federal government could be vaporized. If you think New Orleans was hard to escape from after Katrina, imagine Manhattan with one bridge and one tunnel for the western escape route after a nuclear bomb.
The genie is out of the bottle, as the cliché goes. The more countries have nuclear weapons, the greater the likelihood that some fool -- or fanatic -- will use one.

Visit the web site www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs where you can listen to two stories, read a third, read reviews, and find links to the publishers of my books.