Nuclear Security and Strategic Analyses Dr Marko Beljac

The False Promise of a Nuclear Weapons Convention

There exist proposals that a nuclear weapons convention should be adopted by the international community, broadly modeled on the biological and chemical weapons convention.

All things being equal this should be opposed by all those interested in peace and a more demilitarised form of world order. I strongly suggest that activists in the Western anti war movement think through these issues carefully and not allow themselves to be swayed by emotional and a political arguments.

In my previous blog post I cited comments from Joe Biden to the effect that prompt global strike is here to stay. Obama's Quadrennial Defense Review was basically on a par with Clinton era Joint Vision 2020, which featured the concept of "full spectrum dominance". Obama's QDR, however, had a tinge of manifest destiny thrown into the mix.

Think about that.

If tomorrow a nuclear weapons convention were adopted that would open the field for more conventional military interventions, not less. It would not lead to a demilitarised world order, but would actually, perversely, have the affect of facilitating war.

The American peace movement should strenuously reject calls for the adoption of a nuclear weapons convention on the above grounds.

During the freeze movement of the early 1980s Noam Chomsky had made some critical remarks about this campaign. He argued that the freeze movement needed to take into consideration conventional military interventionism. He was right. The task of the peace movement then should have focused on helping to end the cold war, not necessarily ban the bomb.

The bomb was dangerous because the cold war was dangerous. Nuclear weapons might destroy civilisation, but they might also save it, for example through destroying a menacing near earth object.

The undue focus on the bomb by the freeze movement was correctly dubbed by some as "weaponitis".
The same can be said today for arguments calling for a nuclear weapons convention.

I think the agenda of the peace movement in the West must continue to focus on military interventionism and its sources in our domestic institutional and doctrinal framework.

In so far as nuclear dangers are concerned our primacy task should be directed towards trying to achieve minimum deterrence and the consequent dealerting of strategic nuclear weapons. This will greatly diminish the leading threat to nuclear security, namely accidental nuclear strikes.

That's doable under the current structure of international relations.

A nuclear weapons convention is a monumental diversion.

I implore, once again, that the Western peace movement think carefully about the issues. Do not allow emotional and a political arguments to govern the type of political action that we take.

These matters are far too important for that.