NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , AUGTEMBER 2001
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BILL PLYMPTON*
destroy this instrument - to lift its use from death to life - if the
world will join in a pact to that end." Nations under the Baruch
Plan would be barred from acquiring, developing and possessing
nuclear weapons, and all nuclear materials and production
plants would be placed under international control. The Soviets
countered with their own ban of nuclear weapons, but the icy
chill of the impending Cold War polarized discussions until,
in 1949, the Soviets test exploded their first nuclear weapon
The Cold War did not completely freeze out the idea of
eliminating nuclear weapons. In September 1961, the U.S. and
USSR issued a joint statement agreeing to the "elimination of
all stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, bacteriological, and other
weapons of mass destruction, and cessation of the production
of such weapons; (and the) elimination of all means of delivery
of mass destruction." This effort, however, was a victim of the
increased heating up of the Cold War which culminated the
following year with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the
world has so far come to nuclear war.
Still the worst moment of the Cold War (and perhaps
of human history, which might have ended there), it is now said
that our planet and species were not as close to obliteration as
the participants thought, and a number of other brushes with
nuclear oblivion followed, most publicly unknown, others from
well-publicized systems failures — in particular a few frightening
instances of computer malfunctions averted breathtakingly close
to the point of no return. (A 13 cent part was at fault in one
glitch, an interesting comment on the price of civilization.)
The Cuban crisis started when the U.S. discovered
Russian nuclear missiles being emplaced on the island in late
October 1962. The Russians claimed they thought the U.S.
was about to invade Havana, which the U.S. denied (though the
previous year it sponsored the Bay of Pigs fiasco and attempted
several times to assassinate Fidel Castro) President Kennedy
and his advisors demanded the missiles be removed and a
naval blockade was set up to prevent Russian vessels from
delivering any more of the weapons In a very short time the
dispute reached for the doomsday button. The American myth
is that the Soviet Union backed down from the brink of extinction
and removed its missiles from Cuba. In reality U.S. and Soviet
political leaders cut an 11th hour deal (the Soviets to withdraw
their missiles from Cuba, the U.S to remove some obsolete
missiles from the Soviet border with Turkey) because the
military juggernauts of both countries were moving inexorably
toward nuclear confrontation.
At a time vtfien the U.S. and USSR were settling into
a Cold War status quo and recognizing a balance of terror that
made it absurd to initiate a nuclear war because both would be
obliterated, communist China, which joined the nuclear club
(which also included at that time England and France and
probably Israel) to the consternation of the two primary super
powers, was accepting the discarded notion that nuclear war
was not only inevitable but winnable. This contradiction, and
Maoist China's adoption of Stalinism just as Russia was
abandoning it, produced an ideological schism which is
considered more profound than any since Catholicism split
between Rome and Constantinople.
The nuclear arms race quickened in the Reagan years.
The U.S. readopted its formerly repudiated policy of arming for
a winnable war. The balance of terror became a rapidly shifting
teeter-totter during the early 1980s. New generations of horror
were pokered like chips -- including plans for a space-based
ABM system in violation of the 1972 treaty that was quickly
parodied as 'Star Wars' — and psychologically it seemed in
the upper levels of government that denial matched the pace
of reality: the more bizarre and dangerous the arms race got,
so equally were official dismissals of the fears of holocaust
their actions precipitated.
Though the Reagan policy was irresponsible and skirted
oblivion, the renewed and more vigorous than ever arms race
broke the Soviet Union which was already fatally strained by
internal contradictions and ruptures. Russian Premier Mikhail
Gorbachev's remarkable personal appeal might have been a
singular factor that put the brakes on the virtually out of control
rush toward nuclear confrontation. Attempting to save his
crumbling empire, Gorbachev tapped into the great worldwide
angst about nuclear weapons in order to slow down the arms
race which was bankrupting the USSR He succeeded in ending
the Cold War but the Soviet empire imploded
The arms treaties made during the Cold War were
worthless in themselves, as are all treaties After all, there is
no court of accountability for nations short of war. Treaties exist
only as long as they are convenient to their signers, and have
been used more often as justification for warfare than for peace
The importance of the nuclear arms treaties was not their
ratification but the process (although ratification continued the
process) of negotiation.
Suspensions, sanctions, thunderous denouncements
and intense renewals of nuclear arms competition were not
unique in the history of negotiations between the USA and
USSR. If anything, it was that sort of aggressive behavior that
originated the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) talks in
1969. At issue were anti-ballistic missile systems (ABMs) that
were being developed by both countries as defense against
incoming missiles The ABM systems brought sharply divided
views on their possible destabilization of the mutually assured
destruction concept and to a persistent malignancy about
nuclear weapons — not radiation, but the belief that a nuclear
war can be fought and won despite substantial evidence that
mutual annihilation wll be its only result
The combined threats of newly developed ICBMs and
ABMs set up in defense of them prompted the first round of
SALT talks in Helsinki in November 1969. Two and a half years
later, the SALT 1 talks ended on May 26, 1972 when President
Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev
signed the 'Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty' and the 'Interim Agree
ment of Strategic Offensive Arms'.
The ABM Treaty specified that each of the belligerents
could have only two ABM deployment areas, which were
subsequently reduced to one area apiece. This was to be so
restricted and so located that neither the USA nor the USSR
could provide a nationwide ABM defense or could form the
basis of developing one, which left penetration by the other's
offensive missiles virtually unchallenged. The intent was to
limit development of offensive nuclear weapons that would be
deployed against ABM systems and provoke a new cycle of
proliferation and stockpiling of such weapons. The Soviet Union
chose Moscow, which was already curtained, as its ABM site,
and the U.S., which initially planned to protect Washington,
D.C., selected an ICBM site in North Dakota.
Precise quantitative and qualitative limits were imposed
on the allowed ABM systems. At each site there was to be
no more than 100 interceptor missiles and missile launchers.
Although deployment of radars intended to give early
warning of missile attacks was not prohibited, they were to be
located only along the territorial boundaries of each country
and oriented outward so that they would not contribute to an
effective ABM defense of the interior.
The treaty prohibited surface-to-air missiles (SAMs),
intended for defense against aircraft, to be used against ICBMs
and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and also
prohibited developments and improvements that would make
such attacks possible.
Neither side was to develop, test or deploy ABM
launchers capable of launching more than one interceptor
missile at a time or modify existing launchers to give them
this capability, and systems for rapid reload of launchers
were similarly barred. Interceptor missiles with more than
one independently guided warhead were also banned
Both parties agreed to limit qualitative improvement ' , ’
of their ABM technology and to prohibit the development, testing
or deployment of sea-based, air-based or space-based ABM
systems, which is at the heart of the current attempt by
President George Bush Jr. to scrap the treaty and resurrect
Reagan's 'Star Wars'. And should future technology develop
new ABM systems "based on other physical principles" than
those employed at the time of the treaty, it was agreed that
limiting such systems would be negotiated
At some point in the SALT 1 talks the negotiators must
have concluded that one of their primary subjects was to prevent
nuclear war A year after the SALT Treaty was signed President
Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev signed an 'Agree
ment on the Prevention of Nuclear War1. The USA and USSR
promised to make the removal of the threat of nuclear war and
the use of nuclear weapons an "objective of their policies," to
practice restraint in their relations to one another and toward all
countries, and to pursue a policy toward stability and peace.
The Agreement committed both countries to consult
one another if they found themselves in a nuclear confrontation,
whether brought about by their own policies toward each other
or as a result of political developments elsewhere in the wDrid
The Agreement provided that these consultations were to be
communicated to the United Nations and to allies and other
countries.
International concern over skyrocketing nuclear arsenals
finally prompted the United Nations to hold for the first time a
special session on disarmament in 1978. Signed by all UN
members, the conference called on nuclear weapons nations
to focus their efforts on the elimination of nuclear weapons:
"Nuclear weapons pose the greatest danger to mankind
and the survival of civilization. It is essential to halt and reverse
the nuclear arms race in all its aspects in order to avert the
danger of war involving nuclear weapons. The ultimate goal in
this context is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. The
most effective guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and
the use of nuclear weapons is nuclear disarmament and the
complete elimination of nuclear weapons."
An agreement reached by Soviet Premier Gorbachev
and U.S. President Reagan in 1987 to regulate intermediate
range nuclear missiles marked the end of the era of East/West
confrontation (the Cold War). Lord Zuckerman wrote for The
New York Review of Books that the agreement was also,
"even if unpredictably, the catalyst for the political, nationalist
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and economic upheavals of the old USSR and what used to be
called Mittel Europa" (culminating in savage ethnic genocide in
Eastern Europe).
The abrupt end of the Cold War between the two
superpowers and the shattering of the Soviet empire that
followed precipitated new dangers. The newer threat was a
different form of "nuclear shadow" hanging over the world that
was not bound by the intricate series of treaties devised over
a half century The nuclear shift was no longer a big power
confrontation "that could utterly devastate the contestants and
pollute with radiation the whole of the northern hemisphere,"
Lord Zuckerman wrote in 1993: 'What is urgent now is the issue
of proliferation — the danger of nuclear weapons being made by
a country unsophisticated enough to use them against a
neighbor, and the possibility of nuclear weapons being acquired
by a terrorist organization."
Although the Armistice of World War 1 lasted less than
a generation, it was a hope that humanity's addiction to warfare
might finally end because war had become too horrible to bear.
Ironically, that hope accompanied the larger fears of nuclear
annihilation during the Cold War: that a balance of terror made
warfare itself obsolete. That balance, horrible as it was, is yet
regarded preferable to the post-Cold War uncertainty of a wild
card nuclear club that has been released from the restraints of
collective oblivion — newer members to the club Pakistan and
India gnash their nuclear teeth over Kashmir.
The half century nuclear arms race created immense
fortunes for munitions makers and made the economies of both
superpowers hostage to military spending. The American econ
omy in particular produced an interlocking Mafia of thousands
of corporations involved in designing and constructing nuclear
warheads and developing systems for transporting, arming and
launching the weapons. The estimated annual costs for
maintaining and as well as expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal
was nearly $50 billion, with that figure nearly doubled when both
nuclear and concomitant conventional military systems are
considered. More millions of dollars should be factored in the
form of nuclear weapons research grants to hundreds of univer
sities and colleges.
The nuclear arms race was a twofold liability to
American society and assuredly Russian society as well —
it held the citizens of both countries hostage to the fears and
the oppressive secrecy it invoked, and it diverted hundreds of
billions of dollars away from other social needs. The rubric of
national defense not only built the private fortunes of munitions
makers in the USA and placed them outside public scrutiny and
accountability, it also gave them tremendous political power
which was generally conservative and anti-democratic in nature.
With the Cold War over and the Soviet Union banished
to history's dungheap along with the 20th century it astonished
and appalled, the United States as the only remaining super
power is attempting to put in place a millennial form of Pax
Romana by reinvigorating the Star Wars space sattelite-missile
and -laser system, which has been called "extravagant, inept,
unnecessary and destabilizing "
President George Bush has said "the Cold War is over
forever," and he and Russian President Viadimer Putin have
agreed to a new round of arms talks to further reduce nuclear
stockpiles, although last year Putin changed Russia's military
doctrine to a "first strike" mode in response to Star Wars. Yet
Bush is adamant about abrogating the 1972 ABM treaty and
taking over the "high frontier." Star Wars partisans insist it is a
defense system but it is actually the ultimate offensive nuclear
weapon which theoretically would be capable of raining laser
beams and missiles down upon every place on the planet.
The development and use of atomic bombs on Japan
will be disputed long after World War 2 diminishes to history
as ancient as Caesar's campaigns in Gaul. The advent of the
nuclear age might always be a topic of debate, although a
thousand years from now the beginning of atomic power will be
as misty as the discovery of fire or the first use of a hammer,
two such useful essentials no one can conceive that humanity
ever functioned without them, which future generations might
think about splitting the atom.
Everybody bom since 1945 has lived their entire lives
under the shadow of the Mushroom Cloud, which supersedes
the Cross as the most relevant of humanity's icons. The world
has recently lurched away from the bnnk of nuclear war, yet its
possibility is far from remote.
Most people would rather not be reminded that they live
in the age of plutonium, and that wherever they live they are an
hour away from a missile that has their address despite current
dismantling of arsenals: enough remain to obliterate the planet
multiple times Our troubles did not originate with the gods we
invent nor from the cosmos we hardly understand: the nuclear
devil is our owi, not a bad joke played on us by a malevolent
deity nor is it a divine instrument of hurrah for the faithful For
all its awesome power and despite suspicions that it is wildly
out of control, nuclear technology is a product of human beings
and a problem of human scope that can only be resolved by
human beings.
Humanity will either obliterate or preserve itself An
indication that the species might be wrth saving will be its
courage to try Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented The
knov^edge of them will last as long as homo sapiens sapiens
defies its own handicaps and dwells in the galaxy If we are not
smart enough to contain our atomic goblin our ruined cities will
leave no trace that we once briefly and suicidally ruled Earth
*Bill Plympton is an Oregon artist famed for his animated
subjects which are on the sharp edge of satire