[WCUSP] Fwd: [NucNews] It's time to talk about Israel's nukes, and ours, too

Tue Dec 11 14:37:53 CST 2007

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: viviane lerner <vivlerner at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 3:35 AM
Subject: [NucNews] It's time to talk about Israel's nukes, and ours, too
To: NUCNEWS <NucNews at yahoogroups.com>

It's time to talk about Israel's nukes, and ours, too

 Lew Butler
 Friday, November 30, 2007

 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/30/ED2MTLH3T.DTL

 Many months ago Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, let slip a
 reference to Israel's nuclear weapons. While it embarrassed him, it
 was no surprise to the rest of the world. It has been known for
 decades that Israel has nukes. Estimates are that there are probably
 as many as 200 in the Israeli arsenal, including thermonuclear
 (hydrogen) ones.

 What is surprising is that there is almost never any public
 discussion in the United States, and certainly none in the White
 House or the Congress, about these weapons. Is there any
 understanding between Israel and the United States, its principal
 source of military aid, about their use? If so, does the
 understanding cover "no first use," similar to the policy advocated
 in the United States at the height of the Cold War? What would the
 United States do if Israel were ever under an attack that might lead
 it to a nuclear response? Has the United States ever talked with
 Israel about its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
 Treaty? For Israel, are the weapons more of a danger to its security
 than a defense?

 These have always been critical issues but are doubly important now
 that the United Nations, with strong U.S. support, is putting intense
 pressure on Iran not to develop the capacity to produce nuclear
 weapons. Iran is responding that under the nonproliferation treaty,
 to which it is a party, it has the right to develop nuclear power,
 and that is all that it is doing. But, as was the case with India and
 Pakistan, eventually Iran will probably justify having nuclear
 weapons on the grounds that its sworn enemy, Israel, has them. Now an
 already tense situation has become worse with Israel's unacknowledged
 Sept. 6 air attack on a supposed Syria nuclear installation, and the
 call by some hawks in this country for U.S. raids on Iranian nuclear
 facilities.

 There is, of course, a long history of nuclear tensions in the Middle
 East. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactors to prevent it
 from developing nuclear weapons. After the Persian Gulf War, in the
 1990s, U.N. inspectors spent nearly seven years in Iraq inspecting
 its nuclear facilities. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's decision to
 expel those inspectors began the series of events that led to the
 United States invading Iraq on the premise that it had weapons of
 mass destruction. Now, if Iran continues to develop its nuclear
 capacity, a whole new crisis would develop if Israel tried to destroy
 Iran's reactors as it did the Iraqi ones and, presumably, the Syrian
 installation.

 The unspoken basis for U.S. policy about Israel's nukes seems to be
 that we don't want our enemies to have such weapons but we don't
 worry as much if our friends, like Israel, Pakistan and India, have
 them. As for our enemies, the negotiations in North Korea and Libya
 show that even a "hard line" U.S. administration is willing to offer
 significant financial and other benefits to persuade them to give up
 their nuclear ambitions. When, as in the case of Iran, such bribes
 are not apt to work, then we are willing, more so than our European
 allies, to exert pressure and even contemplate military action.

 Moreover, the U.S. stance toward the nuclear ambitions of others is
 inconsistent with and discredited by our own refusal to live up to
 our obligations under the nonproliferation treaty. Under that treaty,
 signatory nations with nuclear weapons agreed to reduce their
 arsenals to a minimum, and ultimately eliminate them entirely, in
 exchange for other signatory nations not acquiring such weapons. Even
 that strangest of nations, North Korea, had enough respect for the
 nuclear nonproliferation treaty to announce publicly it was
 withdrawing from the treaty in order to develop its nuclear capacity.
 But the United States has never come close to getting down to the
 minimum level contemplated when we signed the treaty. The U.S.
 arsenal is estimated at some 5,700 active nuclear weapons with nearly
 4,000 in "reserve."

 Clearly, the Bush administration is not going to talk publicly about
 our understanding, if any, with Israel about its nuclear weapons. And
 no member of Congress is rushing to get into a subject as politically
 delicate as this one. That leaves it to those of us in private life
 to begin the debate, for the sake of the United States and Israel.

 We can start with the danger posed by nuclear weapons in an
 increasingly destabilized Middle East. We can acknowledge that any
 nuclear arsenal might be the target of terrorists. We can look back
 to how close we came to a catastrophic nuclear exchange at the time
 of the Cuban missile crisis. And we can remind ourselves that no
 subject is too sensitive for public debate when the risk is the
 horror that use of even one nuclear weapon would trigger.

 Lew Butler is chairman emeritus of the Ploughshares Fund.

 =====
 In accordance with Title U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
 distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
 interest in receiving the included information for research and
 educational purposes.

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