COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
'maniacal
recklessness' ?
Why?
What God granted the exclusive right to possess nuclear
weapons to the United States, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Britain, and
France?
My guess is that were it not for North Korea's nuclear
program, it would long since have found itself in the position of Syria or
Libya - countries literally torn apart by American-inspired terror.
And what of the world's biggest hypocrisy in these matters,
Israel?
We know reliably that Israel has roughly 150 nuclear
weapons, or some combination of fewer finished ones and stockpiles of fissile
material to quickly assemble new ones. We know this from a number of dependable
sources, including former-President Carter. We've even seen, decades ago, a
photo of one of its implosion-style fissile assemblies courtesy of an Israeli
whistle-blower.
Israel made the argument early on, in the 1960s, to the
American government that it believed it had to go nuclear to survive, and
America and its allies have accepted that since.
How would that be less true for North Korea?
And of course when Pakistan started working intensely on
nuclear capability, despite American-inspired sanctions, it argued the same
thing vis-a-vis India. Moreover, it is thought Saudi Arabia financed the effort
and has an agreement under which it can call on a certain number of bombs or
warheads. But now all that remains unquestioned and in place.
And there’s the matter of proliferation. The father of
Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Khan, got into serious trouble when he was
discovered making certain blueprints available to others, but South Africa
briefly became a small nuclear power under its Nationalist government, and we
know it did so with the help of Israel, again with the survival-of-the-nation
argument playing a role.
(Where South Africa’s stocks of fissile material ended up
has never been established since the collapse of the apartheid government,
although there was speculation around Israel. It has been plausibly suggested
that the untimely death of Dr. Kelly in Britain, disguised as a suicide, around
the time of the invasion of Iraq, Dr. Kelly being an expert who knew the facts
in nuclear weapons matters, was related to his knowledge.)
The trouble today with a nuclear club or monopoly, is that a
newly aggressive United States, its establishment upset over its relative
decline in world affairs, seems ready to do almost anything to enforce its
will. North Korea and others well know that.
