BUSH'S NUCLEAR AGGRESSION
George W. Bush is beginning his days as President by committing the most serious nuclear weapons aggression in decades: at-empted creation of a national missile defense system for the United States and its allies. This immediately signals that the United States is withdrawing from the nuclear "balance of terror" that today keeps an uneasy peace among the United States, Russia, and China. Bush's promised abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the cornerstone of the world's nuclear arms control treaty structure, tells everyone that the United States is going after total military domination of Earth, at the reckless risk of its own and the world's people and environment. Now avoiding nuclear war means stopping the Bush national missile defense push, and moving toward the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.
Only an aware and active American population can turn the tide toward nuclear war. And only an American peace movement and national security community committed to stopping national missile defense, and moving toward abolition of nuclear weapons, can help the American public out of its psychic numbing about nuclear weapons. Today nuclear weapons are about American vulnerability, not strength. Nuclear missiles, in the hands of Russians, Chinese, and several other potential enemies of the United States, are the only strategic threat the poor nations have against the rich.
It is in US national interest to abolish nuclear weapons and stay out of space warfare, to avoid catastrophic attack against the US homeland. Instead of following Clinton's economic and diplomatic rapprochement with China, Bush begins with stark military and diplomatic confrontation with China. Can China be both a WTO economic partner and an adversary in a nuclear arms race? Confronted by the US effort to become invulnerable to nuclear missiles, the Chinese and Russians have only three military choices: submit to US military domination, develop counter-measures to keep their second-strike nuclear threat credibility against the United States, or launch a nuclear first-strike against the United States before an effective US missile defense can be deployed.
Bush should drop his nuclear aggression now and confound everyone with a nuclear peace strategy: parallel reductions of US and Russian nuclear missiles, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and join global talks for a ban on weapons in space. This would take the United States out of a field of battle, high-altitude nuclear war, where our nation faces catastrophic defeat.
--Carol Wolman and John Lewallen are organizers of the Nuclear Peace Action Group, devoted to moving away from the brink of nuclear war and toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. Contact them at <cwolman@mcn.org> or <mail@NuclearPress.com>.
Nuclear Peace Action Group Box 822 Albion, CA 95410
707-937-2050 cwolman@mcn.org