More Nuke Double Talk From John W. McBush

Jon Wolfsthal at Democracy Arsenal has posted what I think is a pretty good analysis of the speech given by “Senator Honor and Virtue” yesterday at the University of Colorado; Wolfsthal summarizes as follows…

John McCain’s speech on nuclear weapons seems to adopt the narrowest of lenses in dealing with nuclear weapons. Moreover, his proposals – many of which might sound good – don’t match up with other things he has said on nuclear weapons, on Russia, on Iran and suggests he doesn’t really get the complexity of these issues. Lastly, the tone may be better, but many of the proposals—not to mention his language choices—are right out of George W. Bush’s play book. This may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but it is still a wolf.

As Wolfsthal notes, McCain is trying to reposition the Repug “brand” as one that encourages talks and disarmament with other nations while still reserving the right to wage pre-emptive war whenever it damn well pleases.

In particular, though, I remain concerned about the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as far as McCain is concerned. With that in mind, I checked out what he has to say on his web site (from here)…

Strengthen The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): As President, John McCain will work to strengthen and enhance the non-proliferation regime. We need to strengthen enforcement of the so-called “atoms for peace” bargain by insisting that countries that receive the benefits of peaceful nuclear cooperation must return or dismantle what they receive if they violate or withdraw from the NPT.

To begin with (as Wikipedia tells us here), “Atoms for Peace” is the title of a speech given by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower that he delivered before the U.N. General Assembly on December 8, 1953. The speech reflected the professed spirit of cooperation by the United States concerning the sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes throughout the world (the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still quite fresh in everyone’s minds).

As part of that, the “Atoms for Peace” award was set up through a million-dollar grant from the Ford Motor Company in 1955 (telling to me that no one has received the award since 1969).

But getting back to the speech, I think McCain’s statement that “countries that receive the benefits of peaceful nuclear cooperation must return or dismantle what they receive if they violate or withdraw from the NPT” is disingenuous to say the least. This is because McCain doesn’t specify who would supervise the “returning” or “dismantling” of nuclear technology (The U.S.? The U.N.? And who’s to say the affected countries wouldn’t develop their own capabilities independent of “returning” or “dismantling” what they have?).

Also, the issue isn’t one of countries withdrawing from the NPT; the issue is one where countries flirting with a non-peaceful use of nuclear technology have not signed the NPT (namely, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea). And as I and others have noted, we sold technology to India in spite of that.

And as far as violating the NPT, well, I think this states pretty clearly what Bushco and our Israeli “friends” think of the treaty (and McCain doesn’t say he'd strengthen the treaty, but the “non-proliferation regime” - ??).

Given all of this obfuscation about his true intentions on the NPT as well as other issues of threat response to actual or potentially hostile states, I think what Barack Obama has said is at least as true now as it has ever been; if you like George W. Bush, you’ll love John McCain.

(And speaking of nukes, this is an interesting anniversary which makes the NPT issue all the more urgent, IMHO.)