Weapon polich might change for smaller nations, by Abdeljabbar Adwan aljazeerah.info

aljazeerah.info Opinion Editorials

Weapons policy might change for smaller nations

Abdeljabbar Adwan, the Daily Star, 3/26/03

The parlous present behooves us to look back at the not too distant past in order to avoid future calamities.
Let us examine without prejudice the pretexts London and Washington are using to justify their war on Iraq. These include the fact that Saddam Hussein is a dictator, that his regime is capable of producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the possibility that the Iraqi leader might at some future date use these weapons to attack the West.
George W. Bush and Tony Blair rightfully say there are a lot of terrorists who would dearly love to lay their hands on WMDs to use them against the West. But many people also realize that no WMDs were used to execute the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The logical way to deal with these Anglo-American fears should be to (a) take steps to eradicate the root causes of terrorism in order to isolate the terrorists and turn their own people against them; (b) prevent the spread of WMDs through the rigid implementation of international conventions; and (c) set up zones free of WMDs, and force countries to respect them.
Yet the conclusions arrived at by the Americans and the British include none of these provisions. In fact, these conclusions threaten to destroy the relative stability the world has witnessed since the end of the Cold War. Under the doctrine of MAD mutually assured destruction that prevailed during the Cold War, the world was divided into two camps in which smaller nations could live in peace and security under one or the other nuclear umbrella. The UN was then a forum at which both sides could sit together to discuss problems, although its ability to solve them was questionable, thanks to America’s prodigious use of its veto power (mainly to protect Israel from censure).
There were fewer conflicts between neighbors, because the superpowers took it upon themselves to settle their allies’ problems.
The technology needed to produce WMDs has existed since the 1920s, although the weapons that could only be produced by the great powers then can be produced by today’s average school lab. More than 80 countries around the world have the capability to produce lethal chemical weapons, more than 100 can produce biological weapons, and about 50 are able to produce nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Nevertheless, the most ambitious and destructive terrorist act ever was carried out without the involvement of WMDs. In fact, the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists used nothing more sophisticated than box-cutters to commit their crimes.
While not all countries capable of producing WMDs do so, it is also true to say that it is almost impossible to prevent secret terrorist cells sophisticated enough to produce such weapons from doing so. Which brings us to an important question: Is the Anglo-American policy of preemption the correct one to deal with potential threats, or will it only make matters worse by actually encouraging such threats?
This is a policy that will lead to the deaths of many innocent people and will encourage groups and individuals to seek revenge. Pursuing such a policy will in addition to its detrimental effects on Iraq and the Middle East result in serious consequences for a world order that is still in its infancy.
Now that Iraq is being targeted illegally without UN authorization, many other small nations are bound to seek protection from a similar fate, either by trying to obtain WMD capability to deter aggressors, or by trying to avail themselves of a nuclear umbrella provided by those powers on the UN Security Council that are against Anglo-American policies.
In other words, the WMD market will boom now that Iraq has been attacked. Also, new alliances might well emerge, such as Franco-Arab-African alliance, a Russian-Asian alliance, or an alliance between China and a Japan fearful of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. It is not entirely unlikely that WMDs would be used in the current conflict; both the US and Iraq have used chemical weapons before and might well do so again. There are two potential scenarios in which such weapons might be used:
1. Anglo-American forces might choose to use WMDs tactically if the military campaign faces stiff Iraqi opposition causing heavy casualties. It is almost a foregone conclusion that should the Iraq war take an inordinately long time, the positions of both Bush and Blair might become untenable. They might consequently decide to use WMDs to ensure a rapid victory.
2. Saddam Hussein might still have some chemical and biological weapons left that he will use against his attackers.
But whatever the ultimate outcome of the conflict, the WMD market will flourish, with dozens of countries either seeking to produce such weapons or buy them off the black market.
Iraq is being invaded although it is not the only dictatorship with the potential to produce WMDs. Meanwhile, more than 30,000 ex-Soviet nuclear warheads are being ignored. Most of these weapons, which were supposed to have been dismantled under international agreements, are still there. Moreover, the components of those that were broken up have disappeared increasing the risk of nuclear technology falling into the wrong hands.
The START treaty did not demand that the Soviet nuclear arsenal be destroyed, only dismantled and safely stored. In Russian, this means burying the weapons in order to save on maintenance costs. But who knows where these materials are now?
The next nuclear war might be fought between India and Pakistan, encouraged by the religious tensions caused by the Iraq conflict. In the past, India was protected by the Soviet Union, while Pakistan was an ally of the US. Now this protection is gone, and India is ruled by a fundamentalist Hindu party while Pakistan is about to fall to Muslim fundamentalists thanks to America’s aggressive policies vis-a-vis the Muslim world.
It is unlikely that other countries would be sitting back waiting to be hit without thinking of ways to get back at the US. Their conclusion: Iraq would never have been targeted if it had an effective deterrent; if Iraq had the means to terrorize its enemies, they would never have dared invade it.

Abdeljabbar Adwan is a London-based Palestinian analyst.

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