By HELEN CALDICOTT AND TIM WRIGHT
US President-elect Barack Obama has shown he has the power to change hearts and minds. Soon he'll also have the power to render the planet dead and uninhabitable for the rest of time with just the press of a button.
Despite the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains a supersized arsenal of 10,000 nuclear warheads, more than half of them deployed, and about a quarter of them on hair-trigger alert.
| And yet strangely, we've only used two of them in all our history. Neither Helen nor Tim were born yet when we did so, but they might ask Grandpa, the quiet, quaint fellow with the limp and the scar, as to why we did ... |
They come at a whopping cost of $US50 billion ($A76 billion) a year, roughly the amount needed to pay for universal health care for every US citizen.
| Oh yeah, right. $50 billion is a pittance as to health care needs if we sign up for Obama-care. |
Most of America's nuclear weapons are hundreds of times more powerful than the two atom bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Each of them directly threatens global security and human survival.
| As opposed to the Iranian nukes? Or the Russian nukes? No doubt Rantburgers can see who and what Helen and Tim are at this point. |
No doubt Barack Obama will find it more than a tad discomforting when, come January, he's granted this incredible power. Unlike the last three Oval Office occupants, he believes that the world would be better off without nuclear weapons.
| This is, of course, rubbish. We'd all like a world without nukes, except that we wouldn't like very much the world that would come about without nukes. |
In his race for the top job, he told a crowd of adoring fans that the elimination of nuclear weapons ''is profoundly in America's interest and the world's interest'', and he committed to make abolition a ''central element of US nuclear policy'' which has generated great hope among anti-nuclear campaigners everywhere.
| Hope to be dashed real soon now, just ask the Kos Kiddies ... |
But words must be met with action.
| Not true, ask any UN diplomat ... |
And it's too soon to know if Obama has it in him to steer the world towards sanity and survival.
| He has hopes and good wishes. Whether he has anything else we'll see, but I personally doubt it ... |
Will he be courageous enough to take on the military-industrial complex which stands solidly in his way? And does he have the knack to persuade other countries, in particular Russia, to jump aboard the disarmament bandwagon?
| He'll just look into Putin's eyes, won't he ... |
Clearly, the two Cold War foes have a special responsibility to lead the charge on eliminating nuclear weapons because together they possess 95 per cent of global stockpiles. As a first step, they need to end the lunacy of keeping their weapons on high-alert status, followed immediately by deep and irreversible cuts in the size of their arsenals.
| Attention, Helen and Tim: we've already cut our stocks substantially. We're still working to dispose of the fissible material generated from the last round of decommissioning, especially in Russia. Why don't you do something useful like persuade Iran to stop their head-long rush to get a bomb? |
At the earliest opportunity, all countries should come together to negotiate a new multilateral treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons, as proposed by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. It would be similar in form to laws already banning biological weapons, chemical weapons, landmines and cluster bombs. Obama could make this happen.
| No he couldn't. We haven't foresworn landmines and cluster bombs ourselves. |
Unlike the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the new protocol would include mechanisms to verify compliance.
| Like those we currently use for Iran and North Korea ... |
Importantly, it would also require the same of all nuclear-armed states meaning there's no good reason why countries like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea shouldn't join.
Of course there's good reason! What idiots.
We don't have tension because we have nuclear weapons. We have nuclear weapons because we have tension. Pakistan and India developed nukes because they each wanted the ultimate counter to the other. North Korea wants nukes because it allows them to extend their national policy of threats and altercations. Iran wants nukes because it wants to be the undisputed leader of the Islamic world -- and because it wants to nuke Israel. Israel, in turn, has nukes to ensure that none of its neighbors get too frisky.
Those are all good reasons why these countries won't join -- good reasons as far as THEY are concerned. |
Commendably, the Australian Labor Party promised before last year's federal election that in government it would ''drive the international agenda for a nuclear weapons convention''. But it hasn't followed through, choosing instead to continue the usual mantra of countries with powerful nuclear-armed allies like the US: it's too soon to be thinking about an abolition treaty.
Many pundits resolutely disagree.
| If only we had a world run by pundits ... |
The influential Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which was headed by former UN weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix, argued in its 2006 report: ''A key challenge is to dispel the perception that outlawing nuclear weapons is a utopian goal. A nuclear disarmament treaty is achievable and can be reached through careful, sensible and practical measures.''
| If only we had a world run by Mr. Magoo ... |
This October, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the idea of a new treaty in his UN Day speech, and the Dalai Lama had earlier said that a nuclear weapons convention is ''feasible, necessary and increasingly urgent''. Indeed, if we're to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and avert nuclear catastrophe elimination through a binding treaty is our only option. Now is the time to pursue it.
| The big issue, of course, is how you ensure that no one cheats. If there is a 'ban' on nuclear weapons, and everyone else complies, and you keep ten locked away in a cellar, you have a substantial advantage you can then use. And the fear of that keeps all the other nuclear powers from disarming. So good luck ... |
All countries have a legal obligation, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law, to achieve nuclear disarmament. It cannot be postponed indefinitely. This is the ruling of the world's highest court, the International Court of Justice.
| There is no 'customary international law'. And the ICJ is a joke, invented by Europeans and leftists to perpetuate their colonial rule on the rest of the world. |
The global environment is right for change. Opinion polls in Europe and the US show that the overwhelming majority of people want nuclear weapons abolished, once and for all.
| We also want a chicken in every pot. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. We had nuclear weapons in the Cold War to ensure that the Soviets would not invade Europe. We have nuclear weapons today because, in the end, it's in our best interests to have the ultimate counter. |
And hard-hitting military honchos have started questioning the usefulness of these weapons in an age of terrorism.
| Said honchos aren't named, but most military people aren't a fan of nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean we should eliminate them, even as we recognize that we won't nuke terrorists. |
History will judge Barack Obama, the next American leader, by his success or failure on this crucial issue. Ridding the planet of nuclear weapons the ultimate instruments of terror could be his single most important legacy.
| If that's what his legacy depends on, he's in trouble. He might wish to settle for George Bush's legacy: freeing 50 million people from tyranny. |
Dr Helen Caldicott is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in Washington. Tim Wright is president of the Peace Organisation of Australia.
| And both are useless idiots ... |
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