Rethink the nuclear threat

Correspondence Rethink the Nuclear Threat To the Editor: The call by John Powers and Joseph Muckerman in the Winter 1994 issue to “Rethink the Nuclear Threat”
of emerging nuclear-powers.

There is no question that we must be able to deter nuclear powers and that the threat of devastating retaliation is an indispensable component of such deterrence. But retaliation need not and should not be nuclear. U.S. conventional capabilities are more than sufficient to inflict devastating retaliation on any emerging nuclear-weapon state. . , , Specialpreparations to recowrfmm a nuclear attack on the United States. While the emergence of new nuclear states would represent a major threat to * . . international stability, the direct threat to the United States is likely to be

modest. A small attack would leave most of the nation unaffected and capable of organizin g relief and reconstruction. Upgrading U.S. abilities to respond to Summer 1994 I 477

Correspondence disasters, as the authors recommend, should be justified on its own merits, not as a hedge against nuclear attack. These disagreements should not obscure the soundness of most of the recommendations Powers and Muckerman offer, Some are already being implemented. . . . The most important step of all, however, is simplest to advocate and the hardest to implement: to think seriously about nuclear weapons as an integral part of the future international security environment. It would be nice to think that the end of the cold war has made historical footnotes of nuclear weapons, but as Powers and Muckerman so convincingly demonstrate, that just isn’t so. A world in which we did not have to think about these awesome weapons would be more comfortable, but it would not be our world. The authors have done all Americans a significant service by reminding us of that fact. Ambassador Linton F. Brooks Distinguished Fellow Center for Naval Analyses Alexandria, Virginia

To the Editor: Bravo to O&is and the authors Powers and Muckerman for taking on an issue about which much hand wringing occurs, but little productive thought. This is a good start to a dialog that should gain substance and resolve as April 1995 approaches and the NPT Conference is held to consider its future. We in the United States need to heighten our awareness of issues and the threat that is out there in the rapidly dissolving “international system” of the past. Having agreed with the authors that dangers exist, I must take exception to their assertion that proliferation has only slowed in one case, South Africa. Over the last several months, some positive signs have been recorded: the North Korean agreement to IAEA inspection in February 1994; the agreements with the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan for the resolution of the nuclear warhead problem; the agreements by Argentina, Chile, and Brazil that resolved their remaining problems over the commercialization of nuclear energy to make the Treaty of Tlatelolco a reality in 1994; the agreement between the United States and Russia to stop targeting nuclear missiles against each other; and Argentina’s positive nod toward the NPT. . . . Of considerable concern is the situation with our long-standing partner in the world of nuclear terror, the Soviet Union. . . . Recently, the Russian military announced a revision in its own nuclear weapons employment policy, stating that it could no longer adhere to a “no first use” policy, but may have to resort to the use of nuclear weapons when confronting the defense of Russia in the context of a declining military establishment. It is this strategic and budget-driven abandonment of both Russia’s and America’s conventional military capabilities that may present both nations with unacceptable dilemmas in the future in attempting to deal with proliferation

Correspondence worldwide. Another arrow must be added to the Powers and Muckerman quiver of policy options. That is an option of reinvigorated regional non-proliferation regimes to deal with the basic security causes of the quest for nuclear weapons. Such a regime could be established in Northeast Asia to address the needs of both the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of KoreaSouth and North. To date, the international community has not been interested in providing the necessary security environment to replace the loss of China and the Soviet Union as socialist guarantors for Pyongyang. There is a need for the rapid development of a Northeast Asian community that can handle the issue of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and do so in a way which meets the security needs of all participants. One such concept calls for the creation of a Limited Non-Nuclear Zone for Northeast Asia centered on a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. . . . While the specifics of the zone . . . would need to be resolved by international dialog reflecting the security needs of all the states in Northeast Asia, its heart would be the removal of nuclear weapons from a zone within a 1,200- to 1,300~mile radius placed in the center of the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula and verified by a multinational force consisting of trained professionals from all the nations involved. The verification force would become . . . a working security community [that] . . , would help the area gain the stability needed to attain the regional economic development levels envisaged in such concepts as the Tumen River Project. Until the political and security viability of such schemes can be enhanced by regional security arrangements, necessary private capital inflow will be insufficient. Any such concept requires the active and continued involvement of the United States, but calls also for creative leadership by the nations in the region themselves. Japan, for example, with a newly elected non-LDP government searching for a new and positive role for its security community, could finally bridge the unproductive security debates that have existed between Right and Left since Japan regained her independence after WWII. South Korea could fmd an inspired mission to provide the environment so that even North Korea could assume an active role in creating a regional security community. Russia, long interested in such multilateralism in Asia, would be expected to become an enthusiastic participant disposing of many of its East Asia-based nuclear weapons for early credit in START II. China, while less than an eager suitor, may find additional assurances that Japan, Taiwan, and the two Koreas would be verifiably free of nuclear weapons, would be worth the inconvenience of necessary weapons relocation from the zone. Mongolia would find such a zone useful for its continued economic development, and Taiwan, likewise, would rest easier with several of its potential rivals pledging a new non-nuclear future for most of East Asia. Could not this effort to reduce the nuclear residue of the cold war in Asia be the beginning of a cooperative security regime and a new framework of peace for Asia? A program where all the nations of the region work shoulder-to-shoulder to build a security community that establishes the basis for regional prosperity Summer 1994 I 479

Correspondence and peace is as timely as it is right. Thus, while I applaud the authors and 0+-h for starting this dialog, I hope the concepts of arms control, especially nuclear free zones where they might do some good, and a viable and extended NPT regime will be added to the debate. John E. Endicott Professor of International Affairs Director, Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia

(N.B. Pmfkssor Endicott’s hope begins to be fulfilled in the current tissueof Orbis. See the cluster of essays on regional approaches to non-proliferation.-ed~.l

Swallowing SerbIan A&$ession To the Editor: For more than fifty years, scholars have differentiated Western nationalism from Eastern nationalism. From Carlton J.H. Hayes to I. Greenfeld, civic nationalism has been associated with pluralist democracy and ethnic nationalism with homogenizing styles of thinking. In “Serbia Chooses Aggression” (Winter 1994, pp. 5!&6), Nicholas J. Miller attempts to extend that dichotomy to Serbian (ethnic) and Croatian (civic) nationalism. Miller uses the term “collective nationalism” to describe the Serbian style of thinking, which he sees as inconsistent with pluralism. He contrasts this eastern style with what he calls the “creative solutions” offered by Croatian “constitutional nationalism.” One may doubt that the nationalism of Croatia’s current government is particularly creative or that the nationalism prevalent in Croatia today differs greatly from that in Serbia. Robert Hayden has shown, for example, that Croatian constitutional nationalism alienates the minorities in that country. But the kinds of counterattacks that Miller’s article surely will generate will get us nowhere. What I propose instead is to ask what the implications are if Miller is correct, which I believe he isl:l . . . every Serbian party has a nationalist program. In the December campaign, for example, the allegedly democratic opposition Depos [Democratic Movement of Serbia1 demanded that Serbia, Montenegro, Vardar Macedonia (now part of Bulgaria), the Serb Krajinas, and all of BosniaHerzegovina except Western Herzegovina be united in one state. Miller correctly points out that views of this sort have penetrated deeply into Serbian political culture. Because of the pervasiveness of this kind of nationalism among Serbs, MilIer argues that the United Nations’s blockade will never achieve its main purpose, which is to remove Milosevic in favor of leaders more willing to achieve peace. But in my view, the purpose of the blockade is no longer to remove Milosevic, if it ever was. In fact, at this point, the West probably does not want to remove Milosevic from power because he is the only leader who 480 I Orbis