BANNING the bomb has become an orthodox goal among those who know best what nuclear war would mean. The global coalition of ex- generals and admirals who called last week for a determined drive to rid the world of nuclear weapons is talking on the basis of the most intimate hands-on experience. This initiative follows the recommendation of the equally weighty Canberra Commission on eliminating nuclear warheads.
It is less than three years since General George Lee Butler stepped down from running the United States Strategic Air Command. On taking over, he cut the number of nuclear targets by four-fifths. The strategists, he concluded, were living in a world of illusion, with a secret war plan for a huge over-kill strike upon Moscow. He and many colleagues were increasingly worried by the possibilities of nuclear war by accident. He says he studied an “appalling array of accidents” involving nuclear weapons.
All five overt nuclear powers claim that they would like to see a reduction to nuclear zero: but not one of them really regards this as a desirable goal. Their secret conviction that nuclear weapons should be retained is based on dubious history. There was no nuclear conflict during the Cold War, they argue, therefore there could not have been one. The Soviet Union collapsed and therefore the deterrent “worked”. The logical flaws are evident: in any case, the situation today is very different.
Proliferation, as Butler remarks, cannot be contained “in a world where a handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves the privilege of owning nuclear weapons, and extol the ultimate security assurances they assert such weapons convey”. To argue that nuclear weapons are an insurance against a new Cold War is a sure way of strengthening hardliners in Moscow.
Those who spoke out against nuclear weapons before, labelled peaceniks or comsymps, who were the target of secret surveillance and dirty tricks, may smile now that their heresies are widely accepted. But the dominant feeling must be satisfaction that this is now a mainstream debate.