The Double Standards of the Weapons of Mass Destruction

Someone has a right to have weapons of mass destruction, someone don’t

American President George W. Bush keeps talking about the need to disarm Saddam Hussein. The American people, as well as the whole world, will have to live in fear until Iraq has the weapons of mass destruction. This is what American mass media report. Hundreds of UN inspectors can not find anything scary in Iraq. There are some people, for example, the former chief of the CIA counterintelligence, who think that the version about Saddam’s weapons is simply a hoax.

Novelist John le Carre wrote in his article “The United States of America Has Gone Mad:” Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice.”

Le Carre actually questions the issue of legitimacy of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1441, which obliged Iraq to cooperate with numerous inspectors. This resolution, as well as previous ones, virtually deprived Iraq of the right to stand for its sovereignty. Weapons of mass destruction have been saved all over the world. As a rule, they are not legally banned. This means that the UN acts on the ground of a double standard: someone has a right to keep those weapons and other do not. What are the criteria then? Isn’t the USA the only country that misuses those weapons? The first two A-bombs (the last ones so far) that America dropped on Japan killed 400 thousand civilians and resulted in a very serious burden for the whole world - the arms race. The biological weapons was launched in January of 1952, when the USA dropped cans of infected insects on the deployment sites of Chinese troops in Korea. Those cans were similar to the ones that were developed by Japanese Unit 731, when it developed biological weapons in 1932-1945. The Japanese did not venture to use those cans, although they killed several hundreds of war prisoners during experiments. The Americans saved the chief of that unit Shiro Ishii from trial and execution. The States hired him to work for its labs. In Vietnam (1962-1971) the USA sprayed 70 million liters of the so-called orange agent, which contained dioxin. Even microscopic particles of this  chemical substance destroy hormones, reduce immunity and cause cancer. In Vietnam, the Americans decided to destroy the jungle in order not to let Vietnamese guerrillas hide there. Seven hundred thousand people suffer from horrible dioxin-caused diseases: those people, who took part in that war, their children and grandchildren.

The Storm in the Desert (1991) ended up with numerous cancer diseases because of enriched uranium weapons. About 80% of uranium substance gets dissolved in the atmosphere, while its radioactive particles get accumulated on fields, rivers and lakes. Uranium 238 half-decomposition takes thousands of years. In 1995 American planes dropped 10.800 bombs like that on Sarajevo, which made the statistics of oncological diseases increase 2.5 times there. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said that there were 31 thousand bombs like that used in the aggression against Serbia (1999).

The American weapons of mass destruction kill both allies and even American soldiers. It transpired that the USA’s losses were scheduled to be on the level of 50 thousand men before the Storm in the Desert was launched.  However, there were only 604 American soldiers killed. The USA was happy about it, but the happiness was gone after the outburst of the so-called Persian Gulf veteran’s disease. This disease killed 7758 people by April of 2002. In addition to that, 198 thousand people claim a compensation for their lost health. All those people died over their own toxic weapons.

It goes without saying that the global proliferation of those weapons is not desirable. However, one may understand a certain attraction to them. Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, said a year ago in Moscow that everything needed to be balanced in life: “Balance is required for international affairs as well. If Russia could balance the power of other states, a lot of weaker countries would have a chance to choose and change their sides. The two sides would behave in a decent way.”

Does it seem to be Cold War nostalgic? Why not? As soon as the world order stopped being bipolar, a lot of countries that treasure their sovereignty realized that they could not count on anyone except themselves. This was the only way to provide security. That is why the “nuclear club” had two more members from South Asia. China started dealing with the modernization of its army, while the world diplomacy was added with North Korean and Iraqi issues. Anyone, who is subjected to the USA’s super-pressure, likes the idea of a super-weapon. No matter, how powerful  the Iraqi or the North Korean arsenals might be, it will never occur to the leaders of those countries to attack either the USA, or England, or Japan. A super-weapon for them is a way to deter the aggression of the country, the people of which like military actions, and the presidents of which are ready to bomb anyone for the sake of their rating.

By the way, the notion of inadmissible damage has become one of the grounds of the international security in the modern world. This notion has helped to prevent another Hiroshima for 50 years. The peculiar feature of the ABM Treaty that was concluded between the USSR and the USA was as follows. The two countries were supposed to become open to each other in order to cause the inadmissible damage. They restricted their own anti-missile defense, because they wanted to provide themselves with that defense, if someone might think of aggression. Bush’s single-handed pull out from the treaty means that the USA thought of aggression on the macro level.

Saddam Hussien, Kim Jong-Il would not mind establishing fine relations with the USA on a parity basis. Yet, the USA does not accept any parity in the modern one-polar world. This is the explanation of Iraq’s punishment, for it attempted to be on equal terms with America. The aggression against Iraq does not imply oil fields only. It is not a kind of revenge either. The United States does so in order to suppress a rebellion and to teach everyone. This is also a logic development of the new world order idea. This is what John le Carre meant: “ What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.”

Andrey Krushinsky
PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov