American nuclear double-speak

The United States continues to maintain the largest nuclear arsenal in the world

Last week on May 27, US President Obama visited Hiroshima, the Japanese city on which the Americans dropped nuclear bombs in August 1945 (along with Nagasaki), killing over 220,000 Japanese civilians, which included over 50,000 Koreans as well. Instead of apologising for this act of nuclear holocaust, the first American president to visit the city after its devastation boasted about his commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Apart from having the dubious distinction of being the only country to have used nuclear weapons, the US not only continues to maintain the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, it has in fact under President Obama launched a massive programme of nuclear modernisation and re-armament worth over a trillion dollars. This is, yet again, a clear example of American nuclear double-speak.

The nuclear vaporisation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still being justified by Americans as having been ‘necessary’ to force Japan to surrender and end the Second World War in the Pacific. It is also claimed that the use of atomic bombs saved millions of lives. However, it is highly questionable whether the nuclear bombings really precipitated Japan’s surrender because neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were military targets and only civilians were killed. Even American military commanders at the time questioned the value of attacking these cities which were of no military significance for the Japanese, who were already defeated on all fronts and their surrender was only a matter of time. Not surprisingly, therefore, many Americans have themselves concluded that the bombings amounted to war crimes.

Another relevant question that has been asked ever since is why, if the aim was truly to hasten the end of the Second World War, the US did not use nuclear weapons against Nazi Germany. Were Japanese Asians more expendable than European Nazi Germans?

Coming to the present, the truly galling reality is the continuing sanctimonious behaviour of the Obama Administration on the issue of nuclear weapons. Speaking in Prague in 2009, President Obama expressed his commitment to a nuclear-free world. He was rewarded with the Noble Peace Prize as a result, which in retrospect seems to have been prematurely awarded, to put it mildly. True, he signed a modest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, launched his Nuclear Security Summit process, and concluded an agreement with Iran on the latter’s nuclear programme. However, he failed miserably to convince his own Senate over eight years to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) while the initiative with Russia was derailed by American deployments of Ballistic Missile Defence Systems in eastern Europe, which are seen by Moscow as undermining its deterrence capabilities vis-a-vis the US and Nato. The ‘reset’ with Russia was further undermined by the needless American-backed provocations in Ukraine which compelled President Putin to react, especially to preserve Russia’s Black Sea fleet in the Crimea.

However, none of this compares to the US nuclear rearmament and modernisation programme launched by President Obama while simultaneously extolling the American commitment to nuclear arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. The $3 trillion programme launched in 2010 envisages a wave of nuclear “revitalisation” that includes a new generation of weapons and delivery systems involving land, air and sea-based platforms. In addition to Americans’ existing nuclear and missile arsenal that can blow up the world a hundred times over, the latest weapons include the first-ever ‘precision guided’ atomic bomb that can zero in on deeply buried nuclear ground targets. Since such weapons are precise with smaller yields, they are more tempting to use, even when it comes to using them first rather than in retaliation. This bomb, called the B-61model 12, is the first of five new nuclear warhead types that are being developed. In addition, the US is developing a new type of nuclear weapon called the Hypersonic Glide Vehicle that can travel upto 17,000 miles per hour, dangerously reducing the reaction time for the target country. Then there is an advanced version of the cruise missile that can be equipped with a nuclear warhead. These smart, state-of-the-art nuclear weapons are in addition to the development and deployment of the de-stabilising Ballistic Missile Defence Systems, Lethal Autonomous Weapons or Killer Robots, and nuclear-armed drones. Since such weapons will pose a direct threat to the security of Russia and China apart from other countries, they pose the grave danger of a new arms race between the three major powers. As a result, even former members of the Obama Administration, such as General Cartwright, former head of the US Strategic Command and the former assistant secretary of defence, Andrew Weber as well as William Perry, former secretary of defence under President Clinton, and Senator Sam Nunn have strongly criticised this nuclear modernisation programme.

However, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Obama seems oblivious to such criticism. Instead, he continues to engage in double-speak, raising concerns instead about North Korean nuclear tests and for good measure about America’s favourite scapegoat — Pakistan — for its development of tactical nuclear weapons, as threats to nuclear stability and regional security. President Obama knows fully well that Pakistan’s moves are in response to India’s Cold Start doctrine of seeking to unleash a limited conventional attack on Pakistan despite the possession of nuclear weapons by both sides, and that Islamabad has been forced to develop tactical nuclear weapons as the most cost-effective option to deter an Indian conventional offensive. He implicitly recognised this himself when, during the Washington Nuclear Security Summit last April, he called upon both India and Pakistan to make “sure that as they develop military doctrines, that they are not continually moving in the wrong direction”. More importantly, it is as a result of US policies to build up India as a counter-weight to China that strategic stability in South Asia has been undermined. President Obama and his successors need to recognise that under no circumstances will Pakistan allow its security to be vulnerable to any threat.

If there is any message from America’s nuclear double-speak and duplicity for Pakistan, especially in the wake of Mr Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, it is this — only a credible nuclear deterrence is the guarantee for its future security. On this there can be no compromise.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2016.

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