US nuclear hypocrisy
IT is now clear that Candidate Obama's promises on many critical issues have dissipated in the powerful headiness of the president's office. His references to the Kashmir issue have been lost as have his statements relating to reversing Bush's militarism.
One of the most obvious instances of amnesia has been the Obama commitment to nuclear disarmament. He has neither resuscitated the CTBT nor moved away from the Bush Administration's rationalisation of nuclear war fighting and first use of nuclear weapons.
It hardly matters if he restricts the framework for using nuclear weapons since using one weapon or more than one is still a justification of the military uses of these weapons. In the same vein, Obama's START treaty with Russia does not rid the two countries of their enormous nuclear arsenals and enough are retained to destroy the world.
Clearly, it is economic and political rationalisations that are guiding Obama's nuclear arms reduction policies, as was the case with previous US Administrations, rather than a commitment to nuclear disarmament. Yet it was this commitment that apparently played such a major role in Obama getting the Nobel Prize!
That is why Obama is relying so heavily on the global nuclear security summit to resuscitate his failed commitment to nuclear disarmament. So, the pressure will be put on the rest of the world to make commitments to nuclear security and so on.
What US is unprepared to do itself, it wants the rest of the world to do. In this context, the world may be asked to make a commitment to the US draft for a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). Pakistan needs to stand its ground and reject this pressure on the FMCT since this does not include reductions in existing stockpiles of fissile material or international verifications.
©The Nation (Pakistan). All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Asia News Network.
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