[Mb-civic] Washington's Gift to Bomb Makers

[Michael Butler]

August 6, 2004

Washington's Gift to Bomb Makers

here is no bigger and more urgent threat to the security of every American
than the possibility of nuclear bomb materials falling into the wrong hands.
That is why it is astonishing, and frightening, that the Bush administration
is now pushing to strip the teeth from a proposed new treaty aimed at
expanding the current international bans on the production of weapons-grade
uranium and plutonium. With talks on the new treaty set to begin later this
year, the administration suddenly announced last week that it would insist
that no provisions for inspections or verification be included.

 This reversal of past American positions - ignoring Ronald Reagan's famous
cautionary advice, "Trust, but verify'' - is all the more disturbing because
it guts a treaty that could have significantly advanced President Bush's
oft-stated goal of "keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out of the
hands of the most dangerous regimes.'' After raising the alarm on this
terrifying problem, the White House now says Americans and the rest of the
world are better off trusting empty, unverified promises.

The agreement, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, would, for the first
time, ban all countries from producing highly enriched uranium or plutonium
for nuclear weapons. It would cover the four countries that do not subscribe
to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: North Korea, Pakistan, India and
Israel. And it would apply to the five officially recognized nuclear weapons
nations, including the United States; they would be allowed to retain and
use only their current inventories.

 No treaty has ever been or will be foolproof. But a strong fissile
materials treaty would help dry up international nuclear-trafficking
networks - like the one set up by Abdul Queer Khan, the Pakistani bomb
designer - and make it harder for North Korea to go into the business of
exporting plutonium and enriched uranium. But the treaty could not achieve
these vitally important goals without credible verification provisions, like
on-site inspections.

 The Bush administration argues, unpersuasively, that such inspections might
interfere with making fuel for American nuclear submarines and might allow
foreign inspectors to glimpse secret American nuclear technology. To the
extent that these are legitimate concerns, it would be better to try to
persuade other nations to grant narrowly tailored exemptions instead of
eliminating inspections. Washington also claims that an enforceable treaty
would generate a false sense of security and that it would be easier to get
other countries to sign an unenforceable one. Those are generic arguments
that can be deployed against any enforceable arms control treaty. They
ignore the enormous positive trade-offs of a verifiable fissile materials
treaty, like strict limits on the material available for making nuclear
weapons.

 We live in a world where no nation has a monopoly on bomb technology. The
most effective remaining way to curb the spread of nuclear weapons to
growing numbers of countries and terrorist groups is to impose strict,
verifiable international controls on the production of nuclear bomb
ingredients. The Bush administration prefers a treaty that endorses nuclear
virtue but that then averts its eyes.

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