Hiroshima + 60, part 2

I took part in our town’s peace vigil yesterday again, as I always try to do if I’m in town on a Thursday afternoon. The honking response from the drivers was great. Once again, there were times when there was a pretty awesome cacophony of honking from drivers waiting for the lights to change. Someone came by on a bike and, referring to the recent polls showing that Bush’s Iraq policy has been rapidly losing public support at home, said, “So you guys have been making a difference!”
(I wish I’d replied, “Yes, maybe. But why don’t you either come and stand with us, or at least give our peace center a nice fat donation.”)
Anyway, at around ten minutes of six, the heavens opened. As if the Almighty had opened a trapdoor in the sky and simply dumped around three inches of water on us within five minutes. That was what it felt like. I was stuck out on one corner on my my own with no shelter in sight. So I stuck it out, holding up my “Honk 4 peace” sign. There were some euphoric minutes of me standing there in the swirling waters of the sidewalk doing that, while cars still sloshed on forward through the driving gray rain and honked at us. Then I started to feel quite cold. I stuck it out till our usual ending time of 6 p.m., then a small group of us went to Christian’s Pizza on the downtown mall to start making plans for our annual Hiroshima/Nagasaki Day observation.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the terrible, terrifying decisiopn to drop those two bombs. (This year, also, H/N Day– August 6th– actually falls on a Saturday, which helps our planning some.)
We made some fairly good plans. I think. One of them is to do a sort of “Listening Project” with young people in our community, and just ask them what they know about the bombing of Hiroshima, and what they think of it.
President Truman’s decision to drop those two bombs– both of them on parts of Japan that he knew were heavily populated by civilians– marked the dawn of the “Atomic Era”. It was the only time in history that nuclear weapons have ever been used in combat.
The dropping of the two bombs was also the paradigmatic use, by the US national command structure, of the tactic of “shock and awe”. It was referred to as such by Harlan Ullmann, the author of the “S&A” document. The idea– not totally dissimilar to the thinking behind plans pursued by terrorists– was to launch an act so shocking (and shocking in part because it directly killed and wounded so many civilians) that the national command structure of the country targeted would instantly change its policies, and cave to US demands regarding the terms of the surrender.
The Bush administration’s continued commitment to the pursuit of “S&A” policies of various sorts, including in Iraq in 2003, is one way in which the events of August 6 and August 9, 1945, are still very relevant today. Another is the way in which possession of nuclear weapons has continued, from that day until now, to be a marker of great potency within the international political system. For example, why on earth should anyone think that the five favored “permanent members” of the UN Security Council should be the five “recognized” nuclear-weapons-states?
NW possession is a huge marker of many other aspects of international relations, too…

For example, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970, aspired to become a treaty with universal adherence to a web of reciprocal commitments.
The NPT incorporated two distinct sets of rights and responsibilities– one for those states that were as of that time deemed to be (and recognized as being) nuclear-weapons states, and the other for startes that signed on a non-nuclear-weapons states. State signatories in both categories, however, committed themselves to abiding by Article 6, which stated:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

That was 35 years ago. When will the states party to the treaty get around to fulfilling those commitments, I ask?
The US, for its part, is definitely not headed in that direction! Indeed, toward the NPT as to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that was its chronological twin, the US under George Bush has adopted a general attitude of contempt, based on its general view that the US is so “special” that it should not feel itself bound by any international obligations that they judge might hamper their freedom of action around the world.
Every five years, the states party to the NPT hold a “review conference” for it. The most recent of these just wrapped up a few days ago, in New York. This year, the Bush administration showed how little regard it gave for the whole process by designating only an Assistant Secretary of State to take part, rather than having Condi Rice make even any kind of a “boutique” appearance there.
Here is a quick summary of what happened at the conference, produced by the US-based NGO, the Arms Control Association.
The writer, Claire Applegarth, noted that,

The United States… sought to block discussion of nuclear disarmament and instead focused on the treaty transgressions of particular states.

They also sought to avoid any mention of a (separate) resolution that calls for the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the whole Middle East.
Because of those disagreements and a number of others in which the US refused to budge its position, the conference ended May 27 without adopting any new agreements on how to strengthen the treaty. The only (partial) victory won by supporters of the NPT regime was that it was made clear to the US that no other country would go along with their campaign to oust veteran IAEA chief Muhammed El-Baradei from his position.
The Bushies’ dirty little secret is that they aren’t, actually, terribly keen on the whole approach of non-proliferation, at all. Especially since over the years it has become so strongly associated with the NPT, and the principle of committing to reciprocal rights and responsibilities among all the world’s different states.
They prefer the more “robust” approach of counter-proliferation. This approach means, basically, that the US and its allies can do whatever they please to just go in and destroy anybody else’s suspected or merely bothersome weapons programs, no questions asked. To heck with reciprocating rights and responsbilities.
In 2003, therefore, they launched something called the “Proliferation Security Initiative”, which absolutely does not aspire to “universal” membership. Instead, it’s a sort of ad-hoc coalition of countries that undertake to help the US in interdicting shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on sea, land and in the air.
Oh, did I mention that under the PSI that does not include the interdiction of shipments of WMDs (or weapons pre-cursors) belonging to the US or its allies?
Here’s another, very recent example of why Washington doesn’t like the NPT, and the IAEA, which is the body that does inspections of nuclear facilities under its terms…
AP reported last night from Vienna, where the IAEA has its headquarters, that:

Iranian claims that weapons-grade uranium entered the country from outside, instead of being produced by Tehran as alleged by Washington, appears to be strengthened by initial results of the latest investigation, a diplomat said Thursday.
Traces of weapons-grade uranium on centrifuge parts provided by Pakistan appear to match the uranium found on centrifuges bought by
Iran on the nuclear black market, said the diplomat, accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Gosh, how the Bushies must hate it when international inspectors manage to do their job and come up with evidence-based findings, eh?
Finally, here, for the record, is what I posted on JWN on Hiroshima Day last year.