Noteworthy Article on Nuclear Disarmament; Except …

I recently read a brief but noteworthy analysis of the understandable need for global nuclear disarmament.

The article presented readers with a comprehensible blend of often cited buzzwords, including global confidence building, peace, stability, non-proliferation, international security, nuclear test ban, human development and so forth as well as threats veiled as advice.

Written by a high-ranking governmental official, the treatise begins rather auspiciously by stating the obvious that “one of the most important tasks in the field of international security is to free the world from the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.”

The writer, a distinguished diplomat in his own right, goes on to state that “Global stability and nuclear deterrence remain the facts that we have to live with. Without trust and consensus, the current challenges in the field of nuclear disarmament are doomed to persist for a foreseeable future. Hopefully, the time will come, sooner rather than later, when nuclear disarmament issues are properly addressed based on respect and trust among nations.”

Indeed, due to their monstrous proven and hypothetical dimensions of mass death and destruction, nuclear weapons unquestionably threaten the existence of Earth and the lives that inhabit it and consequently must be banned.

At a United Nations conference for non-governmental organizations on disarmament held in 2009 in Mexico City that I attended as a UN staff member, Miguel Marin Bosch, a Mexican diplomat, not the one who penned the words that I cited previously but who successfully fought for the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in Latin America in 1967, noted that the machete has been known for killing a vast number of people throughout history perhaps more than nuclear bombs but eloquently stated: “Nuclear weapons are intrinsically dangerous. They pose an unparalleled threat to the very existence of humankind. They do not enhance a country’s security but rather imperil the survival of all nations. That should be the point of departure of nuclear disarmament efforts.”

The impassioned nuclear disarmament debate has attracted in the course of seven decades ferocious supporters and opponents. Even today the governments of the evident nuclear powers, the US, Russia, England, France and China – Ukraine used to a member until it voluntarily surrendered its nuclear stockpile to Russia in exchange for the free world’s guarantee of its independence – are filled with officials firmly on one or the other side of the fence as well as those who straddle it. But supporting nuclear disarmament doesn’t mean pacifism and opposing nuclear disarmament doesn’t mean war mongering.

Fortunately, mankind hasn’t had to endure nuclear devastation since 1945.

However, as for the lofty aspirations enunciated in the cited passages above, they are entwined in one major hypocritical fault. They were expressed at the end of last month by Dr. Alexander Yakovenko, Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and deputy foreign minister in 2005-11, in an article on the website of Russia’s broadcast propaganda mouthpiece Russia Today that is meant to indoctrinate the gullible about Moscow’s irreproachable decency.

Beyond theoretical anti-nuclear rhetoric, Yakovenko devoted a couple of sentences to listing imaginary Russian efforts at global confidence building in support of nuclear disarmament. He wrote:

“Russia is constantly advocating for further limitations and reductions of nuclear weapons stockpiles, along with strengthening international regimes of arms control and non-proliferation.”

In actuality, Russia has done nothing to live up to its advocacy for limiting and reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles. Modern Russia does not even match the defunct Soviet Union’s military policy. While the USSR claimed it would adhere to a no first use policy for nuclear weapons, modern Russia dropped that pledge. The revised Russian military doctrine of December 2014 foresees the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the case of a conventional attack that threatens the very existence of the Russian state. Given the strengthening of Russia’s paranoia and harangues regarding its own perceived encirclement by NATO as well as its full-blown war with Ukraine, today’s Russian historical “we will bury you” threats should not be regarded as bluffs.

As of September 2014, Russia had 1,643 strategic warheads deployed on 528 ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers. Russia’s defense budget has grown by more than 50% since 2007, and a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons, according to The Economist.

Furthermore, the same source that published Yakovenko’s fiction, Russia Today, on October 6, 2014, revealed more evidence of Russia’s nuclear war preparedness:

“Russia recently announced a planned overhaul of its entire nuclear arsenal by 2020, as part of a wider rearmament program that has been budgeted at $700 billion.
“Although Moscow has not provided a detailed breakdown of how it achieved the upgrade of nuclear capacity over the past months, experts on both sides of the Atlantic have speculated that the rise has been due to the armament of one – or possibly two – Borei-class nuclear submarines.

“Those are equipped with Bulava missiles – widely considered one of the most expensive projects in Russia’s military history – which, after problem-plagued gestation, have finally been deemed ready for deployment…
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently boasted that the supersonic missiles, which can rapidly change their trajectory, cannot be shot down by any missile defense system in the world, however sophisticated.
“Russia has also invested in mobile Yars systems, and there are plans to revive the nuclear missile trains common in Soviet times. 

Yakovenko also wrote: “Among other things that affect global stability and deterrence, trust between Russia and the West is diminishing. Some of the critical Russian concerns are left unaddressed.”

Indeed, trust between the free world and Russia has finally begun to diminish thanks to imperialistic Russia’s undeclared war with Ukraine. In the course of the past 14 months Russia invaded Ukraine via Crimea then illegally annexed the peninsula. Then several weeks later again invaded Ukraine by way of the eastern oblasts and established its colonial administrations in Luhansk and Donetsk. After witnessing such wanton, unprovoked violence against a peaceful neighbor, it’s no wonder that the free world’s trust in the Kremlin is diminishing.

Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-15, the news media has regularly quoted western experts and Russian officials about Russia’s escalation of its war with Ukraine and its blatant threat of using nuclear weapons to solidify its control over captured Ukrainian territory and push NATO back from the former captive nations.

Among what he called unaddressed concerns Yakovenko included “the Russian initiative on the prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space.”

The placement of nuclear weapons in outer space is hardly a serious option nowadays when Russia is in fact more interested in moving missile delivery systems to occupied Crimea and its borders with the Baltic States. The Russian military is expected to deploy nuclear-capable Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers on the Crimean peninsula. Additionally, the Kremlin is setting up an Iskander missile deployment in Kaliningrad, the Russian territorial exclave on the Baltic Sea coast, for a military exercise. Russia’s state-run TASS news agency quoted a source close to the Russian Defense Ministry who noted, “Strategic missile carriers TU-22MS will be transferred to Crimea in the course of a surprise combat readiness inspection.”

In recent weeks it became evident that Putin had instructed his military commanders to place the faux peace-loving country’s nuclear weapons on full alert just in case the US and NATO decide to oppose Russia’s subjugation of Crimea.

Prominent Soviet-era dissident Mustafa Dzhemilev, spiritual leader of Crimea’s minority Tatar ethnic group, spoke of Crimea’s nuclearization during a press conference at the UN last month: “Crimea that used to be a tourist area is being turned into a military base... and the most alarming is that Crimea is likely to return into a nuclear weapons base.”

Russian threats against the former captive nations are well known but Putin’s global nuclear intimidations do not stop there. Other European countries have also been targeted.
Russia's ambassador in Denmark Mikhail Vanin said a couple of weeks ago that Moscow could aim nuclear missiles at Danish warships if Denmark joins NATO’s missile defense system.

Vanin said he believes the Danes do not completely understand the consequences if Copenhagen decides to join the US-led ballistic missile defense. “If this happens, Danish warships become targets for Russian nuclear missiles,” said Vanin.

Sarah Lain observed in the International Business Times: “The increase in snap military exercises, greater presence of Russian bomber patrols around European airspace and increased naval activity, particularly around the Baltics, are deliberate. Although Russia claims these are routine, and they do not violate international rules, they are intentionally provocative given the current tension with Europe.

“However, it is a more tenuous argument against NATO in the Baltics, when the Baltic States are already members. This may be a sign that Russia is becoming more extreme in its threats, in part because it is running out of options to leverage its position. Russia's threats of nuclear force show an escalation in, and at least rhetorical willingness, to extend the conflict beyond Ukraine. The Russian government and its press machine have also presented a new challenge in their alternative interpretation of facts to create a new narrative in justification of Russian policy. This makes meaningful negotiation and compromise very difficult, thus increasing the risk.”

It would be foolhardy to disparage Russia’s nuclear saber rattling. The Economist noted: “Others want nuclear weapons not to freeze the status quo, but to change it. Russia has started to wield nuclear threats as an offensive weapon in its strategy of intimidation. Its military exercises routinely stage dummy nuclear attacks on such capitals as Warsaw and Stockholm. Mr Putin’s speeches contain veiled nuclear threats. Dmitry Kiselev, one of the Kremlin’s mouthpieces, has declared with relish that Russian nuclear forces could turn America into ‘radioactive ash.’”

Hopefully no country on Earth will rain atomic bombs on another country. But, realistically, death and destruction are not only the result of a nuclear conflagration. As conventional wars show, including today’s Russian war against Ukraine, tanks, artillery, missiles and conventionally armed soldiers also shed innocent blood. Russians have killed more than 6,000 in Ukraine alone in the past 14 months. The Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-15 certainly cannot build confidence in anyone about Russia’s peaceful intentions.

Yakovenko’s article is nothing more than a flagrant lie that attempts to exonerate Russia’s aggression against Ukraine while promoting a nonexistent nuclear disarmament program.

Carl Bildt, a Swedish politician and diplomat who was his country’s prime minister from 1991 to 1994, and international affairs observer who recognizes the threat Russian poses today, recently noted that Russia’s trustworthiness and credibility are at their lowest levels in history. In other words, everything that is said and written that emanates from the Kremlin's officialdom is a falsehood that is meant to disinform civilized men and women.

Global terrorists, war mongers and aggressors may come and go but so far the one with the greatest staying power is Russia and no amount of hypocritical theatrical tears about global disarmament can relieve it of its guilt. The conversation about nuclear disarmament must go on but without deceitful Russia, which should be banished from the global table.