Nuclear Treaties in the Age of Pentagon Capitalism

n 10 September 1996, the UN General Assembly voted on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). 158 member states voted in favor of it, 5 states abstained, and 3 voted in opposition. The nay-sayers included Libya, Bhutan, and India. The nuclear elites (US, Russia, France, UK, and the PRC) as well as Australia (who sponsored the measure) attacked India from late August, when it decided not to go along with the treaty's language. India appeared isolated, even though it won the support of the five abstainers (Cuba, Tanzania, Lebanon, Mauritius, Syria) and the various states who did not participate (such as North Korea). States such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal offered intimations of agreement with the Indian position even though they signed the treaty. The special treatment accorded to India comes from a technical point in the CTBT: since the CTBT failed in the UN Conference on Disarmament (CoD), the Australian government introduced it as a "private nation's bill" in the General Assembly with the proviso that the 44 states with nuclear reactors or research facilities must sign the bill for it to come into force (the "entry into force" provision). India, one of the 44 states, therefore, scuttled the process.

Why did India fail to sign a bill which it first proposed in 1954 (and which the French and British have consistently fought against)? Why did India turn away from a treaty which might bear within it the possibility of making a nuclear-free world? Whatever India's reasons for its recalcitrance (and there are some, such as Praful Bidwai, who speculate that the pro-Bomb lobby in India controlled the process), I believe that treaties such as the CTBT are largely irrelevant in terms of the carnage being visited upon the multitude by "conventional arms." My contention is that the focus on nuclear treaties serves to obscure the massive trade in "conventional arms" which play an important role in the economies of the overdeveloped world, notably in the economies of the nuclear elites. The structure of the "conventional arms" market, I argue, remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the nuclear treaty skies. A single-minded focus on nuclear matters cannot deal with a crisis of proportions in terms of the destructive fire-power which is being unleashed on the post-colonial world. As far as nuclear treaties are concerned, I believe that only the naive trust the nuclear states to dismantle their arsenals without pressure from a powerful international popular peace movement.

Nuclear Matter: the security of illusions

The CTBT's preamble notes that it is a "meaningful step in the realization of a systematic process to achieve nuclear disarmament." However, the treaty does not carry any firm commitment towards this goal and it certainly does not offer a time bound process for eventual disarmament. In a sense, the CTBT repeats the spirit of Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 which noted that the nuclear elites must "pursue in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." The CTBT, in Article 1, calls for an end to the conduct of "any nuclear-weapon test explosion, or any other nuclear explosion." The negotiation record shows that the parties agree that "any" nuclear explosion must be understood as explosions with yields greater than zero (that is, explosions with any impact are banned). In January 1996, the Indian ambassador to the CoD argued that the CTBT should be "anchored in the global disarmament context and be linked through treaty language to the elimination of all nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework." The Indian argument was not taken seriously.

After the passage of CTBT in the UN, the US State Department spokesperson, Nicholas Burns, made the unequivocal statement that nuclear disarmament was not on the agenda. In point of fact, Burns made it clear that such a quest is in the nature of an idle dream rather than a "realistic" option: "We do not live in an ideal world," he said prosaically, "we live in a world that exists. A world in which the United States will continue to have nuclear weapons, and Russia, China, Britain and France will. There is no getting around that." Let there be no illusions among those who believe that treaties such as the CTBT will contribute towards a climate of disarmament. The nuclear elites are not going to voluntarily give-up their monopoly on the means of total destruction. There appears to be little indication in the "corridors of power" that Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Paris, and London will relinquish their military superiority over the vast mass of humanity.

Treaties which relate to nuclear matters have only been signed by the nuclear elites after the value of the regulated issues is superseded by superior technology or after that particular mode of testing is rendered worthless. When underground testing superseded atmospheric testing, the nuclear elites forbade the latter. CTBT currently forbids live testing, but the nuclear elites will be able to conduct "sub critical" or computer testing procedures which may render live treaties unnecessary for the short-term. The treaties are not signed with nuclear disarmament in mind, but in order to prevent non-nuclear states from entry into the nuclear club. The NPT, for instance, was initiated in 1968 after the five nuclear elites completed their major tests and after underground tests became technologically more effective for measurement and for containment of radiation. The 1986 Treaty of Raratonga called for an end to testing and the emplacement of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific: the French signed in early 1996 after it finished its latest round of tests and the US and UK also joined up after it became clear that nuclear submarines will not be needed to form a security ring around the USSR (now the submarines are located off the shores of the dispersed targets of imperialism). The CTBT, similarly, appeared on the table after the nuclear elite found itself secure in the belief that its weapons are well-oiled and ready. Certainly, "sub-critical" tests "are not adequate for new weapon development or qualitative improvement," but it is certain that these technologies will act as "auxiliary aids to explosive tests" in the short-term (which is the time-frame of some significance since the nuclear elite is known to break treaties which do not work in its interest -- such as the shoddy treatment given to UNESCO and to the recent US refusal to pay its share of UN monies) [Praful Bidwai & Achin Vanaik, Testing Times: The Global Stake in a Nuclear Test Ban, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 1996]. When the US State Department was asked about its use of "sub-critical tests," a spokesperson said in typical double-speak, "I'm just going to limit myself today that we've pledged, in voting for the treaty, to not test on a zero-yield basis, which is a key part of this." Those who believe that a system built on such illusionary ideas as "deterrence through strength" and "strategic military superiority" are welcome to their chimeras -- those who seek to make a world free of oppression must realize that the route of treaties signed between hypocritical states is hardly the means to produce the beloved community of the future.

	Atmospheric Tests	Underground Tests	Total Tests
USA	215	815	1030
USSR	219	469	715
France	50	159	209
UK	21	24	45
PRC	23	22	45
India	0	1	1

Those hands which sign these treaties also sign the sales bills of "conventional weapons" to elements in the Third World where the killing fields multiply daily. There can be no discussion of nuclear weapons without a consideration of the way in which the nuclear elite operates towards small arms.

Pentagon Capitalism

In 1970, Seymour Melman published Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York: McGraw Hill) which detailed the tight nexus between the military elites and industrial capital. Melman showed how the military control over national resources narrowed the choices available for other state programs. Further, he argued that the military-industrial complex uses arms exports as a means to manage domestic economic problems as well as to push an imperialist policy via proxy [p. 96; a more recent study is by John L. Boies, Buying for Armageddon: Business, Society and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, New Brunswick: Rutgers, n. d.]. Eisenhower, in 1961, warned the US of the nexus between the military and industry: "our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society," he said of a leviathan which he himself had helped in no small measure to build. Aggressive arms sales to the Third World began after the onset of the long recession from 1973. Arms sales to the Gulf States, for instance, enabled the recovery of revenue spent on oil. The major arms merchants sold intermediary military technology to the Third World (keeping the latest inventions for the awesome military might of the overdeveloped world). The military-industrial complex earned major revenues from the exchange which enabled the defense industry to subsidize its domestic production as well as to keep the companies productive during times of lean domestic demand. Further, arms production enabled states with flagging economies to keep employment steady [Ann Markusen, et. al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991]. The overdeveloped world benefitted from these sales even at a time when its own economies suffered from the burden of stagflation. The nuclear elites developed a theory to justify their sale of "conventional arms" to the Third World: "conventional weapons," the nuclearcrats argued, provided a "means to circumvent" the use of the nuclear option by non-nuclear and by threshold states (India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa). If these states receive adequate amounts of "conventional weapons," this wisdom contends, then they will not engage in nuclear weapons production. In other words, let these folks kill themselves with weapons which only have local range; let them have neither long-range nuclear devices nor let them have no access to "conventional weapons."

The latter option, total disarmament and non-proliferation of "conventional weapons," is not an option because the arms industry is structured into the heart of the economy of the overdeveloped world. The Third World buys vast quantities of arms from the overdeveloped world: India, for instance, imported $17 billion of military goods between 1985 and 1989; Iraq was next on the list with $12 billion (and it was in the midst of a bloody engagement with Iran at this time). From 1992 to 1994, India increased its arms expenditure by 12% and Pakistan by 19.5%. The major exporters of arms to India include France, Sweden, UK, USA, Russia; Pakistan is outfitted by PRC, France, Sweden, UK, and USA. The role of the nuclear elite in such transactions is apparent. The graph shows the volume of arms sales to the Third World controlled by the nuclear elite between 1971 and 1985. From 1983 to 1993, the US increased its share of the pie to 55% and Russia decreased its share to 10%. Within the past four years, the US renamed its Office of Munitions Control to the Center of Defense Trade [Mark & Leonard Silk, Making Capitalism Work, New York: NYU, forthcoming]. With the end of Cold War II (1979-1989), the arms business has become "trade" rather than a matter of "control."

The US occasionally frames laws to restrict arms sales to states which engage in nuclear production. Two such legal provisions are the Symington Amendment, sec. 669 of the Foreign Assistance Act (which prevents US sales to states who do not meet International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards) and the Pressler Amendment (which suspends US military aid and USAID assistance to states engaged in nuclear weapons development and proliferation -- in this instance, Pakistan). These legal remedies are frequently exempted to funnel weapons to allies or to those states which pay top-dollar. The international community forged two protocols to control the proliferation of "conventional weapons," but even these provisions are nowhere near comprehensive. The UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (10 October 1980) is only for weapons "which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects" while the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (November 1996) is only to prevent proliferation to states "whose behavior is, or becomes, a cause for serious international concern." Other states are offered free use of weaponry.

Of course, there is a contradiction in the policy of the nuclear elites. On the one hand, these states, as the congealed representatives of their industrial, commercial and financial blocs, want to promote a subdued passivity in the Third World in order for "commercial freedom." On the other hand, the nuclear elites want to create discord in the Third World in order to prevent a unified front to the ambitions and interests of the overdeveloped world as well as to prevent the production of a liberatory consciousness amongst the multitude who might then refuse to allow themselves to be dominated by the "chips and coke capitalism" (Bidwai) of our present epoch. There is widespread resentment amongst the peoples of the Third World at the policies of the nuclear elites; the Third World state governments might carry favor with the nuclear elites, but the populace seems to harbor strong sentiments against the current thrust of imperalism (via the International Monetary Fund's Structural Adjustment Program, the multinational corporations' thrust into the previously protected zones of Third World economies and the military displays from the US and its eleves). States might vote with the nuclear elites at the UN, but their own populations display an impatience which comes out in mass protests or else in the growth of unsavory populist movements.

India votes against a hollow treaty and the nuclear elites and their eleves round up the usual suspects to begin a campaign of condemnation. The people of the overdeveloped world, soaked with the propaganda from the media (which in foreign affairs, acts as the mouthpiece of the State Department, et. al.), put their faith in the double-speak of the nuclearcrats. The nuclear elites, meanwhile, balance their budgets on the blood of innocents via the sale of "conventional weapons." There is no pretense of morality in this phase of pentagon capitalism. Those who acknowledge the state of martial rule must unite to revive the peace movement and to combat the culture of militarism and the rampant international and Domestic sale of "conventional arms." There needs to be a Brady Bill for international sales of weapons. On 1 November 1961, a group of progressive US women formed Women Strike for Peace (WSP) and began a campaign against nuclear weaponry and the military culture which produced the Vietnam War. These women produced two slogans which bear repetition: "End the Arms Race, Not the Human Race" and "Let's Live in Peace, Not Pieces." We must have the courage to follow the words of WSP leader and US Congresswoman Bella Abzug who said at a rally in 1970:

"We know that equality and liberation cannot be achieved by American women while our sisters in Vietnam and elsewhere are bombed, burned, murdered and raped. It is hard to talk about free abortions on demand when our hospitals are being closed down because funds are spent on the war, not for the health needs: We know that women cannot get meaningful equality in jobs and education while [the] education program is being drastically cut back and unemployment is on the rise due to misdirected national priorities.....On this anniversary of Women's Suffrage, we feel very strongly that we must raise the demand for...an end to military domination of our lives"

--Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s, Chicago: UC Press, 1993. 242

---

---