Three Minutes to Midnight: The Cold War is over, the Nuclear Threat is Not
By Janice Zagorin | from the April Oregon Peaceworker

Are we safer now from nuclear disaster than when the Cold War ended? No! Like the Cold War, this myth is a long time in dying.
Helen Caldicott, M.D., President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the founder of WAND, assembled a multicultural group of 40 experts to discuss current nuclear dangers. I attended this symposium in Washington, DC January 25-27, 2004.

I learned that our nuclear stockpile of 10,650 bombs weighing 600 kilotons each doesn't make us safer in general or from terrorist attack. We're more at risk now due to the creation of thousands of tons of hazardous waste and the threat of a terrorist gaining access to fissile material.

With 413 nuclear power plants worldwide (103 in the U.S.) and 30,000+ nuclear weapons, it's amazing that we've only had two major nuclear accidents - Chernobyl and Three Mile Island – and a miracle that we've not incinerated the planet in the past 59 years.
Nuclear deterrence is the mainstay of our “defensive" strategy. Our leaders believe that possessing nuclear weapons means no country or individual would dare to attack us. September 11 proved this notion false.

Apocalyptic thinking has consumed us since our government dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. With the annihilation of two cities and the loss of over 200,000 human lives, our greatest fear has been "What if our enemies get the bomb?" U.S. war strategists have focused on “worst case scenarios” which dominate all planning.
This theory holds that we prevent war by spreading fear. It follows, illogically, that the more nukes we have, the more peaceful the earth will be. No criteria have ever been established to determine whether this theory works. Our leaders have conducted no assessment of what we learned in the Cold War, yet Cold War thinking continues to dominate our foreign and military policy.

Apocalyptic Thinking and the Three Greatest Threats

According to The Atlantic, the State Department and Pentagon were told not to waste energy planning for post-war Iraq, because it would take away from the then-current war effort. They accordingly did not plan for the obvious power, water and food shortages that followed, or for looting. Our leaders failed to consider what people do when there's no one in charge, and apocalyptic thinking contributed to getting us into the resulting mess.

Whoever's in charge, our government has consistently refused to disavow first strike with nuclear weapons. The Bush administration ups the ante by threatening non-nuclear countries with nuclear attack. Retired four-star General Charles Horner said, “Nuclear weapons should be eliminated!” His biggest fear is the “danger of creating a generation in the military that sees nuclear weapons as an acceptable form of warfare.”

The three biggest nuclear threats we face are 1) Russia's vulnerable stockpile, 2) our unchanged “Launch on Warning” policy and 3) the Bush Administration's drive to create a new generation of nuclear weapons.

1) Russia and other former Soviet states have at least 3,000 nuclear warheads roughly 40 times the size of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs. Since the breakup of the USSR and subsequent economic crises, nuclear sites are at risk. Where is a terrorist likely to get fissile material but from these poorly guarded sites? What are underpaid and unemployed military guards, scientists, engineers and government workers likely to do except sell to the highest bidder?

Our government's disdain for meaningful arms control measures even spreads into a lack of concern for securing Russia's nuclear materials from sabotage and theft, a crucial component of any "war on terror." The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program was created to help the countries of the former USSR guard and destroy nuclear materials. The White House and the Republican majority in Congress view it as just another liberal foreign aid program; its funding was slashed in the 2003 budget. Former Senator Sam Nunn, one of the program's creators, believes so strongly in threat reduction that he's currently raising his own private funds for it.

Weapons on Hair Trigger Alert

2) Bruce Blair, President of the Center for Defense Information, stated, “All of the thousands of US and Russian launch-ready weapons only represent an accident waiting to happen and a temptation to terrorists to gain control over them.”
We have 2500 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert pointed at the former Soviet States and China. If only 100 nuclear weapons were exchanged between Russia and the US, it would mean total destruction of both countries.

3) The Administration's own nuclear policy practically ensures nuclear proliferation. When the Pentagon and Twin Towers were hit, our leaders' panic created a new environment of fear. This led to a Nuclear Posture Review with a stated intention to develop “more usable” nuclear weapons, known as “mini-nukes” and "bunker busters". A five-kiloton bomb is not "mini"; a device six times the size of the bombs dropped on Japan will bust more than a bunker.
Anyone who replaces Bush in 2004 will have his hands full rolling back the minute hand on the nuclear clock to where it stood in 2000. It will be up to us, citizens of this democracy, to put pressure on policy makers. In averting nuclear disaster after the Cold War, we've all been very lucky. But the thing about luck is, it eventually runs out.

Janice Zagorin is chair of Lane County WAND and on the board of Amigos de los Sobrevivientes in Eugene. Her email address is jzago@epud.net.