Down & Out: A Nuclear Path
by Gar Alperovitz, Alex Campbell, Thad Williamson
The Nation (December 30, 1996) Vol. 263, No. 22: 16-20.
Copyright 1996 The Nation Company Inc.

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Then there is China. Riding the wave of a remarkable economic boom, Chinas military budget is now growing-as is its boldness in dealing with Asian neighbors (as evidenced by last summer's military exercises and missile firings at the time of the Taiwan elections). To its south, China faces India, a nation that has a substantial fissile material production capacity.

China is also flanked by Russia and Japan, both of which may soon be deploying some form of missile defense system. Like Russia in the early cold war years, China may decide to step up its nuclear capabilities in the face of "potential threats." If so, a new spiral of tension in Asia-perhaps involving plutonium-rich Japan-could replay the dynamics that set loose the "old" nuclear arms race.

For decades U.S. strategists saw nuclear weapons as a counter to larger Soviet conventional forces, they seemed to work in our favor. Now, cheap nuclear weapons give an increasing number of nations and individuals the capacity to strike U.S. cities, either via missile or, more likely, through terrorism. (Bombings in New York, Oklahoma City and Riyadh are dramatic reminders.)

With Russian plutonium and highly enriched uranium trickling into the black market and Russian nuclear specialists increasingly available for sale or rent to the highest bidder, the United States would benefit greatly from the elimination of nuclear weapons.

"Nuclear weapons are still the big equalizer," the late Les Aspin, former Defense Secretary, once observed, "but now the United States is not the equalizer but the equalizee." Indeed, the only direct threat we face is nuclear: Our society is uniquely protected by huge oceans to the cast and west and bordered by friendly nations to the north and south. We fear no conventional, attack.

Many U.S. strategists also now recognize that nuclear weapons no longer play a central role in the Pentagons arsenal. To be sure, they provide a "big stick," but for most real-world situations conventional weaponry is superior. Former cold warrior Paul Nitze recently suggested, "The United States should convert its principal strategic deterrent from nuclear weapons to a more credible deterrence, based upon smart conventional weapons."

The radical change in modem nuclear realities gives a fresh impetus to general disarmament efforts. The reasons are rooted in a deep and inescapable logic: First, some disarmament issues are inherently circular-and irreducibly global in nature. There can be no serious progress in connection with the Pakistan-India nuclear standoff, for instance, so long as india fears Chinese nuclear weapons. But China cannot disarm unless Russia does. And Russia cannot do so unless the United States and Britain and France do. Thus, ultimately, long-term progress on nuclear disarmament requires a global build-down.

Second in many regions of the world nuclear disarmament cannot be achieved without reductions in conventional forces. In the real world it is unlikely that a nation with a small population like Israel will ever abandon nuclear weapons unless the much larger populations of the combined Arab nations are constrained in their capacity to organize conventional forces. In South Asia the asymmetry between small Pakistan and large India poses similar problems.

Like U.S. leaders during the cold war, Israeli and Pakistani military strategists believe that nuclear weapons are the ultimate "deterrent" against numerically larger forces.

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