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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



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Mine Aysen Doyran
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