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On March 1 in the Washington Post, Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, attempted to debunk some myths related to the threat of nuclear weapons. Based on his other writings, we believe he is a reasonable guy who actually wants to get rid of nuclear weapons. We are rebutting him here because his comments clearly display the dangerous arrogance and complacency that dominates even the anti-nuclear-weapons community in Washington DC.

Krepon Myth 1. The threat of a nuclear attack is high and growing.
Krepon: We've actually survived much more harrowing times. In 1962 there was the Cuban missile crisis, the worst two weeks of the Cold War. And how about the decade-long free fall that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union? During its final days, the USSR possessed 30,000 nuclear warheads and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for about 64,000 more. Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev were jockeying for control over nuclear launch codes, and many experts worried that the military chain of command would splinter. Then, after the Soviet Union fell apart, thousands of weapons suddenly belonged to fragile states such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan. American officials wisely brokered the return of the nuclear weapons to Russia, where they were locked down. Stranded Soviet missiles and bombers were also returned for dismantling.
 
Our view: We have not survived more harrowing times. We have never known more harrowing times. The Cuban Missile Crisis was, indeed, a close one. In fact, we came within a whisker of nuclear war about 40 times during the Cold War. It was a 5.5 trillion dollar confrontation between the two elite superpowers with the most to lose from a nuclear holocaust. It was meant to look dangerous, but the brakes were on hard the whole time.

We may have been in some extra danger when the Soviet Union collapsed, but the remaining superpower stepped in almost immediately in an attempt to take over the world by itself. Now, that attempt has failed and the lone superpower is collapsing. As the US Empire comes to an end, as the centers of planetary power shift from the US and Europe to China and Asia, as the gap between rich and poor reaches revolutionary proportions, as the era of cheap oil ends, and as we confront the terrible destruction we are still inflicting on our ecosystem, we face a global situation far more destabilizing than the end of the British Empire, which brought us World Wars I and II. The human family has never faced global problems of the magnitude we face today, and the chances that we will solve those problems peacefully are slim. The first step toward preventing World War III is getting rid of nuclear weapons. If we fail, we are looking at a paroxysm of violence that will make WWII look like a picnic.

Krepon Myth 2. Sooner or later, a mushroom cloud will burst over an American city.
Krepon: Fortunately, the darkest nuclear nightmares are also the least likely to occur. During the Cold War, many Americans lived in fear of a bolt-out-of-the-blue Soviet missile attack; today our anxieties center on nuclear terrorism. Yet since 9/11, not a single person has died in an act of nuclear terrorism, while 57,000 have been killed and 99,000 injured in a total of 36,000 terrorist attacks involving explosives, firearms and grenades.

Terrorists have had a hard time getting their hands on nuclear weapons. Although governments and enterprising freelancers have sold missiles and centrifuges, there is no reliable evidence that they have auctioned off nuclear weapons to wild men they can't control. More good news: It would be very hard for a terrorist group to build a nuclear weapon on its own without being discovered in the process. Terrorists could acquire enough nuclear material to make a dirty bomb, which would use conventional explosives to spew radioactive material, but they could actually do much more damage with automatic weapons.

Our view: Krepon’s contention that all the nukes were safely returned to Russia has never been and cannot be confirmed. In American Hiroshima, David Dionisi says we have good reason to believe that Al Qaeda obtained at least some weapons-grade fissile material. Al Qaeda may very well have the bomb already and may just be waiting for the right moment. Perhaps they are waiting for the US to cross the nuclear threshold first. Krepon knows no more about this than David Dionisi or me or you, so his assurances mean nothing.

Krepon and others routinely tell us confidently that, while terrorists might be able to manage a dirty bomb, it would be extremely difficult for them to create an actual fission explosion. However, the plans for a uranium bomb are on the Internet, and production lies well within the capacity of a well-financed terrorist group with a good machinist. If nuclear weapons spread around the planet, the chances for theft or even deliberate release of a bomb increase exponentially. The mushroom cloud over an American city remains a very real possibility. Actually, according to the Al Qaeda plan called American Hiroshima (for which Dionisi named his book), a small nuclear weapon is to be used to blow up a nuclear power plant near a metropolitan area in the hope of killing four million Americans. If they manage to blow up Indian Point Power Plant, for example, we could lose all of Manhattan and Long Island forever. This is the kind of danger we are living with, and it is just wrong to assure us that it won’t happen.

Krepon Myth 3. Rogue middlemen such as A.Q. Khan are the villains of nuclear proliferation.
Krepon: Recently freed after five years under house arrest, this Pakistani scientist deserves a special place in the proliferation hall of shame for selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. But governments, intentionally or otherwise, have done far greater damage. China helped Pakistan build an atomic bomb. India's nuclear program received an early boost from President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program and from the Canadian government, which provided a research reactor. In the 1970s, Israel and South Africa helped each other develop their nuclear capabilities. North Korea's bomb program began with a Soviet reactor. And those are just a few examples.

Our view: Myth 3 is irrelevant to the danger we face. Whether the villains are governments or individuals makes no difference. As long as nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials exist, they can be stolen or given and used.

Krepon Myth 4. Now that Iran and North Korea have nuclear weapons programs, many of their neighbors will pursue the bomb as well.
Krepon: Such worst-case proliferation scenarios haven't happened in the past and are unlikely to roll out in the future. During the Cold War, the two superpowers curbed the spread of nuclear weapons technology by extending defensive "umbrellas" over their allies. Over time, the rules of nuclear commerce were tightened, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty became almost universally accepted. Most of the countries threatened today by Iran and North Korea are friends of the United States, which can use diplomacy, containment, deterrence and, as a last resort, conventional military capabilities against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Our view: Krepon cannot possibly know that worst-case proliferation scenarios “are unlikely to roll out in the future”.  He has no basis for this assertion other than it hasn’t happened yet.

When India went nuclear in May 1998, Pakistan followed in two weeks. Was that not a worst-case proliferation scenario? If Iran were to obtain the bomb, how long would it take Saudi Arabia to get one? Brent Scowcroft, who advised two US presidents on national security, recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,“We’re on the cusp of an explosion of proliferation and Iran is now the poster child…. If Iran is allowed to go forward, in self-defense or for a variety of reasons we could have half-a-dozen countries in the region… doing the same thing.” Does Krepon know something Scowcroft doesn’t know?

About six months ago, after Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert’s accidental inclusion of Israel in a list of nuclear-weapon states, the Arab League announced that if Israel ever openly admits to having nuclear weapons, the Arab states would be forced to drop out of the NPT and get their own weapons. The countries of the Middle East are plenty rich and smart enough to get the bomb if they want it, and twelve of them started new nuclear programs last year.

The idea that the US and Russia can physically prevent proliferation is an extremely dangerous fantasy. In 1946 President Truman (who dropped the bomb) told Robert Oppenheimer (who made the bomb) that Russia would never get the bomb because he (Truman) would make sure of that. The Russians had it in three years. The US also failed to stop China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. If the US or Israel were to attack militarily to prevent Iran from developing the bomb, the Middle East would erupt in violence. The flow of oil to the US would be cut off or greatly constricted. What would the US do if its blood supply were threatened? The US does not have enough troops to control the whole Middle East. I suspect it would end up using nuclear weapons, and all our hopes for peace, justice and sustainability would go up in radioactive smoke.

Krepon Myth 5. The threat of ballistic missile attacks on the United States is growing.
Krepon: Wrong again. While the threat of short- and medium-range missile attacks on our allies and forward-deployed troops is growing, the danger of transoceanic missile attacks on U.S. soil has decreased markedly. Last year, with U.S. assistance, Russia dismantled 82 ocean-spanning missiles, bringing the total number of missiles sent to scrap heaps since 1992 to 1,377. China is now estimated to have fewer than 30 ocean-spanning missiles (though this number will rise). Overall, the long-range missile threat to the United States has decreased by two-thirds over the past two decades, thanks to treaties negotiated by Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush.

Still, there are far too many missiles in U.S. and Russian arsenals on hair-trigger alert. There's also the problem of North Korea's upcoming launch. If it succeeds -- unlike the last test in 2006, which ended two minutes into flight-- then the doomsayers will have something more to worry about.

Our view: Myth 5 is a straw man. The CIA long ago informed us that missiles and airplanes will not be the mode of a nuclear attack on the US. The weapon will be delivered by truck or boat. I don’t know anyone in the anti-nuclear movement who goes around talking about an increasing threat from ICBMs. Still, since Krepon brings it up, we might as well face the fact that tensions between the US and Russia are growing again. He admits that “the threat of short- and medium-range missile attacks on our allies and forward-deployed troops is growing,” and that China’s ocean-spanning missiles will increase. Why is that?

The US is ringing both China and Russia with military bases. Currently, it is seeking two new bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. This blatant aggression is widely viewed, especially in Russia and China, as preparation for a US first strike with nuclear weapons. No one believes the US story that it needs a base in Poland to defend against a missile attack by Iran. To emphasize this point, Russia is now talking about building a bomber base in Cuba. Here comes another Cuban Missile Crisis.

We don’t believe for a minute that the US, Russia, or China would start a nuclear war on purpose. The rich elite who control these powerful countries have too much to lose. All these exciting threats and counter-threats are designed primarily to frighten the public into allowing ridiculously bloated military budgets. However, given this heightened tension, we are still in danger of an accidental nuclear holocaust, and since the tension is growing, the danger is increasing.

But the real problem with Krepon’s answer is his implication that the thousands of nuclear weapons belonging to the US, Russia, and even missile-increasing China are nothing to worry about. The only real danger we face is the two or three primitive bombs North Korea may have.

North Korea can’t even feed its own people or keep the lights on at night (check it out yourself at Google Earth). How would the North Koreans benefit from blowing up Seoul or Tokyo or even Los Angeles (if they managed, against long odds, to fly a missile that far)? Such an act would be suicidal and is only conceivable if Kim Jong Il is made to feel that he is about to die so he might as well take as many enemies down with him as he can. Unfortunately, Michael Krepon and other war-culture dinosaurs seem determined to make him feel that way.

How could Kim Jong Il let his own people starve while he spent millions on nuclear weapons? Because enough North Koreans were scared enough to let him do it. The thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of the US, Russia and China create a climate of existential threat that will lead country after country to believe the only hope for independence lies in nuclear weapons.

The human family is entering a time of unprecedented change, competition, and turmoil. Will we manage to resolve our conflicts peacefully? Or will we turn to a violent, radical reduction in human population? Either way, the only hope for a livable planet is, in the short run (now), the total elimination of all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials. In the long run (ASAP), the crewmembers of Spaceship Earth have to reject war and get serious about cooperating to preserve our life-support system. If we fail our short-term task, we may very well lose our chance at the long term.

Michael Krepon is one of the many “realists” in Washington DC who would prefer a nuclear-weapon-free world but think we have many decades to achieve it. In the meanwhile, all the US has to do is ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, maybe set up a fissile material cut-off treaty, and, with the Russians, get down to about 1000 warheads. These are all admirable objectives, but they will not solve the proliferation problem. The fact is, a number of non-nuclear-weapon states have been chaffing for decades under the two-tier system that makes five nuclear-weapon states permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto power over everything that happens. The overtly discriminatory Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was always a stopgap measure, and its days are numbered. What we need right now, before it collapses completely, is a massive effort led by the US to find and eliminate all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile material, including its own. Anything less than full commitment to such a project is, very literally, playing with fire.

Nuclear weapons give a handful of men veto power over human evolution. Why do we allow this insanity? We don’t have to.