By Adil Najam
President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative
(PSI) provides the right solution, but to the wrong
problem. Nuclear proliferation is merely a symptom;
the real issue is the nuclear weapons themselves. And,
in this sense, the PSI is no more than a Band-Aid, and
a quite small one at that.
The recent scandal in Pakistan, where a corrupt
scientist sold nuclear secrets for profit, only
demonstrates that such traffic is much too lucrative
to be stopped by increased policing. For 60 years,
ever since Hiroshima, the U.S. and the world have
tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We've
tried treaties, economic sanctions and moral
persuasion. And we've failed.
We could not stop the Soviets from getting nukes. We
chose not to resist, and actually ignored, Israel's
nuclear program. We looked the other way when India
went nuclear and, thus, could do little when Pakistan
followed suit. And we merely fumed when North Korea
flexed its nuclear muscles. In the meantime, we have
built and maintained the world's largest nuclear
stockpile.
Can we contain Pakistan's nuclear program? Yes, we
can. But first we will need to contain India's. To do
that, however, India will need to see China's program
rolled back. How does that happen? For that, we will
need to start looking at our own. As my grandmother
used to say, "If you point one finger at someone, at
least three will point back at you." No one said this
was easy!
Are we really surprised that the rest of the world
rolls its eyes when we pontificate about the dangers
of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in
general — as when Bush referred to them as "the
greatest threat to humanity today"? What other
countries doubt is our sincerity. It is hypocritical
to tell the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are
good enough for us, but not for them. We can't have a
world part nuclear and part not.
Perhaps the fathers of our own atom bomb — Robert
Oppenheimer and his colleagues from the Manhattan
Project — were correct in believing that the only real
way of dealing with nuclear proliferation is to ban
nuclear weapons altogether. Everywhere.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed
ElBaradei understands this reality. He recently wrote:
"We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is
morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue
weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for
others to rely on them and indeed to continue to
refine their capacities and postulate plans for their
use."
We must insist on a nuclear-free world. We must make a
sincere commitment to it at home and demand it abroad.
Rather than better mousetraps for proliferating
nations, we need an approach to eliminate nuclear
weapons. Some may argue this is unrealistic. But no
more so than the misguided, even naive, hope that a
feel-good Band-Aid called PSI will make the world a
safer place.
Adil Najam is an associate professor of international
negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at
Tufts University.
