« Previous Story | Next Story »

October 24, 2005

Non-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction - The search for truth

With the clinking of a glass, the Carmichael Lounge was quickly silenced to allow for keynote speaker, Hans Blix, former United Nations IAEA Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, to take the podium and address the full room – and the campus and CSPAN – about his thoughts on the new age of nuclear warfare, nuclear deterrence, and non-proliferation. Blix had been invited as the feature speaker for Fletcher’s one-day conference on nuclear proliferation and deterrence.

His rather jolly face remained smiling throughout his remarks, but his words took on an air of seriousness as he began to explain the new threats facing the world in an age of transformed warfare. During the Cold War, he explained, we knew our foes. The former Soviet Union had weapons of mass destruction, and our eyes watched them like hawks.

Now we’re faced with groups of non-state actors – most notably and most concerning, terrorist groups – who could acquire nuclear weapons and evade the radar of most current monitoring mechanisms.

He prefaced this subject of nuclear deterrence by gently chastising the United States and other governments and international intelligence agencies for what he called “hyping” the public the past few years about WMDs and other nuclear threats. Lack of confidence in the international community, he says, has come from falsified “extrapolations, innuendos, suggestive interpretations designed to lead us by our noses. When the hyping gets too crude and comes from people who want to have our confidence in political life, we react.”

He then asked the audience why this wouldn’t have led to a more cautious entry to the war in Iraq, or why other international governments and agencies did not revert to a “more critical mind”, and why this has, in fact, led to a decreased emphasis on arms controls agreement.

“It was long ago, I understand, that there was any office devoted to ideas about disarmament,” he reminisced. He then recommended, among other thing, an increase in funding for programs on nuclear threat reduction, accounting on fissile material, destruction of chemical weapons stocks, and better security to combat nuclear proliferation.

However, in Blix’s opinion, none of these criteria warranted the current Iraq War. If anything, he said, it has created a new breeding ground for terrorist activities and other non-state actors.

In the arena of counter-proliferation, he likened the United States to the God Mars and his warlike tendencies, and the European Union to a patient Venus. “The whole world, including the US, would do well, I think, to become a bit more feminist,” he laughed.

As Blix touched on a few of the more recent focus countries and areas in the nuclear arena, he preached a patient approach, one that attempts to work with countries instead of threatening them into desired actions. In the case of North Korea, Blix predicts, “It may be less difficult to persuade the DPRK to stay away from a military nuclear program by promising that the country will not be attacked than by threatening it with attack if it does not stop the program.”

Blix’s most discouraging analysis came while discussing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the US determination not to ratify. Blix stated, “In all likelihood, a US ratification would trigger a Chinese and a Chinese would trigger an Indian, an Indian a Pakistani and so on.”

Blix concluded his prepared remarks by presenting the audience with the following question to ponder: “whether the monopoly on arms and the use of arms in the international community will be brought about by Mars or Venus. In Europe Mars was at work from time immemorial but the job has eventually been done by Venus. I hope she will also prevail at the global level.”

Article by Katharine Brodock, MALD '07

Posted by jessica at October 24, 2005 03:56 PM