Bush outlined a number of steps Washington has already put in practice or is in the process of implementing to prevent “terrorists” or “failing states” from acquiring so-called weapons of mass destruction. These include expanding the already widespread boarding of vessels and seizing “suspect” cargo on the high seas, in the air, or on the ground under the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI); pushing for a resolution at the United Nations that would criminalize the spreading of such weapons to states that don’t already possess them; and banning exports of nuclear material for energy purposes to any government that has not agreed to unannounced physical inspections of its nuclear facilities by imperialist “experts.”

Beating the drums of the war party, liberal critics of the White House applauded the measures but complained that they are not strong enough. “President Bush has rightly called attention to one of the world’s most alarming problems, the quickening spread of nuclear weapons technology, but proposes a disappointingly limited series of responses,” said the lead editorial in the February 16 New York Times. “The initiatives he set forth last week were all timely and useful and deserve international support. But they do not go far enough.”

“In the past, enemies of America required massed armies and great navies, powerful air forces to put our nation, our people, our friends at risk,” Bush said in his February 11 address. “In the Cold War, Americans lived under the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but believed that deterrence made those weapons a last resort. What has changed in the 21st century is that in the hands of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction would be a first resort, the preferred means to further their ideology of suicide and random murder.”

Bush named the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—whose ships have already been stopped and boarded by French, German, and U.S. forces—and Iran as top targets of this kind of piracy.

“America faces the possibility of catastrophic attack from ballistic weapons armed with weapons of mass destruction,” Bush asserted. “So that is why we are developing and deploying missile defenses to guard our people.” The missile “defenses” —based on land, at sea, and in space—now under development would be designed to shoot down incoming missiles. Once deployed they would restore to Washington a first-strike nuclear advantage that it has not enjoyed for five decades, since Moscow tested its first atomic bomb.

Bush summarized the justifications used by Washington to dress up its aggressive military policy abroad and attacks on workers rights at home. “Over the last two years,” he said, “a great coalition has come together to defeat terrorism and oppose the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the inseparable commitments of the war on terror.”  
 
Green light to expanded piracy
“America and the nations of Australia, France and Germany, Italy and Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom have launched the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict lethal materials in transit,” Bush said, adding that the governments of Canada, Singapore, and Norway have also become members.

“Our nations are sharing intelligence information, tracking suspect international cargo, conducting joint military exercises,” said the U.S. president. “We’re prepared to search planes and ships, to seize weapons and missiles and equipment that raise proliferation concerns.” Bush proposed that these actions be expanded to address more than shipments and transfers.

“We can take direct action against proliferation networks,” he said, calling for “greater cooperation—not just among intelligence and military services but in law enforcement as well.”

After Bush proposed the PSI on the eve of a June summit of the G-7 group of imperialist governments, the 11 founding states met in Paris in September. According to a White House statement on the event, they drew up a plan of action to “combat trafficking to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, and related materials.”

These proposed measures include the boarding, searching, and seizing of suspect ships or their cargo not only in ports and territorial waters, but also on the high seas. Signatory governments could also “require aircraft that are reasonably suspected of carrying such cargoes…to land for inspection,” according to the September 5 White House statement on PSI.

Bush boasted of the interception of the BBC China, a German-owned ship allegedly loaded with parts for centrifuges used in the manufacture of enriched uranium. “After the ship passed through the Suez Canal, bound for Libya,” he said, “it was stopped by German and Italian authorities.”

Following the seizure, he said, “The United States and Britain confronted Libyan officials with this evidence of an active and illegal nuclear program. About two months ago Libya’s leader voluntarily agreed to end his nuclear and chemical weapons programs.”

Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi, Bush added, “made the right decision, and the world will be safer once his commitment is fulfilled.”  
 
China-Pakistan-Korea ‘link’
“We expect other regimes to follow his example,” said the U.S. president, exuding imperialist arrogance. Leaving no doubt about who he had in mind, Bush singled out Pyongyang and Tehran, mentioning them repeatedly.

“The government of Iran,” he said, “is unwilling to abandon a uranium-enrichment program capable of producing material for nuclear weapons.” At the same time, he added, “in the Pacific, North Korea has defied the world, has tested long-range ballistic missiles, admitted its possession of nuclear weapons, and now threatens to build more.”

The nuclear programs of both countries, claimed the U.S. president, benefited from the black market in nuclear weapons technology that allegedly revolved around Abdul Qadeer Khan, the top Pakistani nuclear scientist known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Under a government investigation involving the jailing and interrogation of a number of scientists and retired military officers, Khan has confessed to selling and exchanging nuclear secrets. Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who denies any official connection with the trade, promptly pardoned the famous scientist.

“Khan and his associates provided Iran and Libya and North Korea with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges, as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models,” said Bush. “American and British intelligence officers,” he said, “shadowed members of the network around the world. They recorded their conversations. They penetrated their operations.”

Bush also wagged a warning finger at the Pakistani government. “The government of Pakistan is interrogating the network's members, learning critical details that will help them prevent it from ever operating again,” he said. “President Musharraf has promised to share all the information he learns about the Khan network, and has assured us that his country will never again be a source of proliferation.” In the aftermath of Bush’s speech, the U.S. media began pointing to Beijing as another point on the “illicit” Pakistan-DPRK “nuclear proliferation” axis.

“Libyan arms designs traced back to China,” was the headline of a front-page feature article in the Sunday edition of the February 15 Washington Post. “Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia,” the article said. “The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China’s long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s…. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe.”

Earlier in his presentation, Bush mentioned the inquiry into U.S. spy agencies established following statements by former top weapons inspector David Kay. While giving wholehearted support to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Kay said that shortcomings in U.S. spying operations were to blame for the prewar overestimation of Baghdad’s weapons programs.

“The best intelligence is necessary to win the war on terror and to stop proliferation,” said Bush. “That is why I have established a commission that will examine our intelligence capabilities and recommend ways to improve and adapt them to detect new and emerging threats.”  
 
Use of nonproliferation treaty
In addition to boosting the PSI, Bush laid out a number of other steps to ensure that nuclear and other weapons remain the monopoly of a handful of governments—most of them in imperialist countries. These steps include the introduction of a resolution before the UN Security Council that would call on all governments to “criminalize proliferation, enact strict export controls, and secure all sensitive materials within their borders.”

Bush also vowed to close an alleged “loophole” in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which, he said, is exploited “by nations such as North Korea and Iran. These regimes are allowed to produce nuclear material that can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs.”

He proposed to restrict the production and export of fuel for nuclear power plants to the “40 nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.” Only governments that “renounce enrichment and reprocessing” would be qualified to buy, he said—and then only if they possess “full-scale functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants,” both of which are still under development in the DPRK, Iran, and other countries.  
 
Additional Protocol
“As a fifth step,” Bush stated, “I propose that by next year, only states that have signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to import equipment for their civilian nuclear programs.” The Additional Protocol to the NPT mandates unannounced and sweeping inspections of all nuclear facilities of a country whose government is a signatory. The Additional Protocol was recently used to begin such inspections in Iran, after Tehran was pressured by European Union powers, Moscow, and Washington to sign it.

The impact of such measures, noted the New York Times, would be to restrict “the production of nuclear fuel to a few nations.”

One who spoke in support of the measures in the pages of the big-business daily was International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Mohamed El Baradei. In the editorial, titled “Saving Ourselves from Self-Destruction,” El Baradei said that the U.S. president’s proposal to remove the so-called loopholes and “tighten controls over the export of nuclear material” was “common sense.”

“Much effort was recently expended—and rightly so—in persuading Iran and Libya to give the International Atomic Energy Agency much broader rights of inspection,” wrote El Baradei. “But the agency should have the right to conduct such inspections in all countries.”  
 
Washington: no. 1 nuclear menace
Unlike Bush, El Baradei felt compelled to make at least a passing mention of the need for a “major reduction” by the “five nuclear states recognized under the nonproliferation treaty.” These five—Paris, London, Washington, Beijing, and Moscow—possess the vast majority of the 30,000 nuclear warheads that are still in existence, according to the IAEA official.

Of the five, Washington possesses far and away the largest arsenal and is in a race to further upgrade it, conducting intensive research into new variants, from battlefield “bunker-busting” bombs tailored for north Korea’s underground defenses, to the so-called missile defense shield.
 
 
Related articles:
Tokyo passes bill tightening squeeze on north Korea
U.S. hands off Korea!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home