Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
We human beings do a lot of dumb stuff. In fact, we humans are so damn strange that even when we manage to do something technically brilliant, we tend to follow it up with a lot of dumb stuff. Case-in-point is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, which is being debated by delegates from more than 100 countries –none of which are nuclear powers – this week at the United Nations in New York City. The U.S. chose to boycott the negotiations, which seek to impose a global ban on nuclear weaponry, as did all of the other countries with acknowledged nuclear weapon capability: Russia, UK, France, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel (not acknowledged, but the world’s worst-kept secret).
“US ambassador Nikki Haley said that ‘as a mother, as a daughter’ there was ‘nothing I want more’ than a world without nuclear weapons but they had ‘to be realistic’.
She joined colleagues from the UK, France and around 20 other nations, including non-nuclear states, in gathering outside the UN General Assembly Hall in New York to show opposition to the talks,” Caroline Mortimer wrote for the Independent (UK).
The purpose of the negotiations is to create a legally-binding document that bans nuclear weapons with hopes of seeing all existing stockpiles totally eliminated. Of course, even if such a document were produced from these talks – which end this week but resume in mid-June for another three weeks or so of negotiations – it would only bind those nations who signed onto it, and again, no current nuclear powers are even attending the meetings.
This tends to beg the question: “What’s the point?”
Well, there isn’t one really. Well, I guess there is, as this last half-sentence from the Independent article seems to sum it all up well: “…but despite the opposition from key nuclear players, supporters of the ban feel it could help create a new international norm of rejecting atomic arms.”
Does anyone think a “new international norm” would dissuade Kim Jong-Un from pursuing functional nuclear weapons and missiles? Or, Iran? Or, any other nation that wanted them?
It took about 200 years for the formula for gunpowder to make it to the Western world from China, across language barriers and physical distances not yet made shorter by flight or even steam power.
On July 16, 1945, humans unlocked the destructive power of the atom in a world already connected by air travel, radio and television. Here, 72 years later in a even-smaller world, we’re still pretending we can stop humans from learning an already existing technology; a technology, that the world’s poorest, most ass-backward nation state has managed to successfully weaponize.
I think it also bears mentioning here that humans very rarely forget technologies they’ve already discovered. The last time it happened on a large scale required a fairly dramatic event to precipitate it, namely the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages. Given that the basic workings of nuclear bombs can be found online, humans aren’t likely to ever lose the know-how to create them – unless maybe we use a bunch of them on each other.
So, what exactly is the point of nations “agreeing” to “ban” something everyone knows how to make? There isn’t one. Furthermore, the nations that already have nuclear weapons aren’t in any real hurry to give them up beyond what was agreed to in previous strategic arms reduction treaties and some, like Russia, are seeking to modernize their creaky old Soviet-era missiles and warheads.
No group of humans, no governing body, no piece of paper, no imposition of sanctions will ever be a bigger deterrent to the pursuit of nuclear weaponry than the actual cost of developing a nuclear program itself. This is what makes nuclear weaponry so uniquely monstrous, they are a direct consequence of the existence of government and living under the looming annihilation they promise is mankind’s punishment for the original sin of inventing the state.
Only a government would have any need for a nuclear weapon, and only a government could compel the sort of infrastructure build-out, resource gathering and the laborious process of creating one, and then only via force. Finally, only a government could rationalize using a weapon of such indiscriminate destruction.
There’s no shoving the nuclear genie back into the bottle and re-stoppering it, and pretending such is an even remotely-realistic goal is foolish. Indeed, the world is attacking the problem of nuclear weaponry from the exact wrong direction by trying to restrict a known technology. The wiser approach would be to work toward restricting the power of governments to create such weapons by stripping away its power to tax, steal, coerce and appropriate the property of the citizenry.
Of course, this would require governments to vote to make themselves weaker, which no government has ever done (which, by the way is how one answers the non-argument “but, there’s never been a successful libertarian or AnCap society!”) Governments are cancer and once rooted in place, only ever metastasize until it’s crippled and destroyed every aspect of a nation’s economy and the well-being of the citizenry.
In summation then, there are two approaches to the problem of nuclear weapons – elimination by treaty or the elimination of the governments that create them – and neither have even the remotest prayer of ever being successfully implemented. So, in reality, delegates from 100 nations are enjoying a little springtime vacation in The Big Apple, paid for by their fellow citizens back home, nothing more.
Leave a Reply