http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm Immanuel Wallerstein Comment No. 39, May 1, 2000 "The United States as Nuclear Champion" Somewhere back in ancient time, in the 1970's, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to reduce reciprocally their nuclear arsenals. At the time they were the two superpowers, and they thought it mutually advantageous to do this. It is not as though it had been easy to convince the hawks in the two camps that it was a good idea, but common sense finally prevailed on both sides. In the 1980's Reagan had the wild idea that the United States should construct an impregnable missile defense shield. This proposal had two problems. It represented a violation of the nuclear agreement. And it seemed technically extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. So Reagan's idea was not adopted. Then came the end of the Cold War. Russian nuclear capacity was diminished, but remained nonetheless significant. And nuclear proliferation continued to spread. Israel of course had been an unavowed nuclear power for a long time. So had South Africa, but South Africa renounced this capacity when the post-apartheid regime came to power. India and Pakistan had both been nuclear powers for some time as well, and publicly upgraded their capacity considerably in the 1990's. And the other "near-nuclear" powers all seemed to be maintaining their efforts to move forward, either immediately or potentially. Some were what the United States called "rogue states" - North Korea, Iraq, and Libya. Others were United States allies - South Korea, Japan, Germany, and perhaps Argentina. The U.S. government under Clinton tried to manage this situation in various ways - by bribing Russia and North Korea, by embargoing Iraq, by pleading publicly with India and Pakistan, and privately with Israel. And this policy worked up to a point. But the U.S. nuclear edge, although still enormous, seemed to be eroding slowly. So the Republican opposition in the U.S. revived the Reagan project, and has been pushing for it. And this time, the Democrats seemed less strong in their opposition than in the 1980's. The U.S. military seemed to want it, and they constitute a powerful lobby with great influence on the voters. Where we are at the moment is that Clinton is "considering" this possibility. In order to limit the political damage of such a unilateral revival of the nuclear arms race, the U.S. has been seeking an arrangement with Russia which would permit launching the nuclear missile defense shield project in a limited way in return for other concessions to Russian concerns. In this attempt, Clinton has just had two setbacks. On the one hand, Jesse Helms, speaking clearly for the Republican majority in the Senate, has announced that he would make sure that any agreement Clinton entered into with the Russians would not be ratified by the U.S. Senate. Helms has this power, and there will therefore be no such agreement. At the same time, the U.S. putative effort to create such a defense shield was unanimously, yes unanimously, disapproved at the United Nations conference on nuclear non-proliferation this past month. The unanimity included of course not only France but even Great Britain, the closes ally of the U.S. in world diplomacy. Aside from the fact that these two close allies of the U.S. think the project politically mad, it would also mean a relative diminution of their own nuclear capacity, since they would find it hard (or undesirable) financially to keep up. The U.S. would be surging ahead not only of "rogue states", and not only of Russia and China, but also of France and Great Britain. Clinton is completely boxed in. Isolated diplomatically to a degree never experienced in the last fifty years, and impotent domestically on this issue, nothing will be done this year. But after the elections? Obviously, it depends on the outcome of the Bush-Gore race. And who will win is not at all yet clear. Let us explore each possibility. If Gore wins, his position on these issues will not be very different from that of Clinton, and his constraints will probably be the same (unless miraculously there comes to be a Democratic majority in the Senate, which seems highly improbable). Can he come up with some clever new chess move which will improve the U.S. position in the nuclear game? Not impossible, but the chances are small. If Bush wins, the Republicans will have a big internal debate about the degree to which the U.S. can unilaterally ignore world opinion. Here too the outcome is uncertain. But it is likely that the U.S. will initiate something along the path of a nuclear defense shield. And if so, it is also likely that there will be diplomatic repercussions. One could predict for example that it might shake the whole NATO structure, and speed up immediately the construction of a European army independent of NATO. What seems almost certain is that neither a Gore policy nor a Bush policy is likely to slow down significantly nuclear proliferation. And the possible Bush policy might actually intensify the process. By 2010, we may have a world in which U.S. nuclear capacity is much more advanced, Western Europe much more unhappy with the U.S., and many more avowed and secret nuclear powers in the world. East Asia may become an area of intensive nuclear armaments (over and above whatever the U.S. maintains in the region). Will U.S. relative power be greater or less? I would guess less, and if not less in 2010, then almost certainly by 2020. For the cost of the nuclear race, which now weighs so heavily on everyone except the U.S., will by then have had a seriously negative impact on the U.S. budget as well. Will however all this nuclear proliferation mean that the weapons will actually be used? Here too we must be cautious in our assessments. Frankly, I have never thought that so-called rogue states were more likely to use nuclear weapons than the other states (what shall we call them - virtuous states?). They have the same worry about retaliation. Indeed, it is almost the other way around. A wealthy state like the U.S. may be the first to elaborate the kind of tactical weapons that will seem "restrained" enough to use, but actually extremely dangerous in terms of their long-run radiation effects. In any case, the political discussion has returned to being one between machismo and sanity. And one can never be sure that the sane prevail, especially as the world-system flounders amidst its long-run structural crisis. Immanuel Wallerstein [These commentaries may be downloaded, forwarded electronically or e-mailed to others, but may not be reproduced in any print medium without permission of copyright holder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 12222
