By Allen Myers
Pip Hinman is not available to write at present, but I am happy to defend the position she put in her August 21 article and September 25 letter — all the more so because I think that following Wayne Hall's advice would seriously disorient the movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
No-one has suggested that "India's grievances against the other nuclear states can be used as a lever to achieve nuclear disarmament". India does not carry that kind of weight in world affairs. But Wayne Hall seems to attribute to it a comparable power in the negative: as though India's refusal to sign the CTBT could single-handedly stop progress towards nuclear disarmament.
Such a view is wrong in overestimating the Indian government's influence; and in fact the Indian decision has not stopped other governments from signing the treaty. More importantly, it is wrong in its estimation of the CTBT and of the actions of the major nuclear powers, especially the United States.
I agree with Hall that politics — in the broadest sense of the term — has been a restraint on the ability of the US government to use nuclear weapons. But he exaggerates this into some sort of absolute, which it is not.
It is simply untrue, for example, to say that no government has been able even to "plausibly threaten" to use nuclear weapons since 1945. In the early '50s, the Eisenhower administration threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea, over the Taiwan Strait and in Vietnam — in the latter case so plausibly that it terrified the British government of the day. The US not only plausibly threatened, but came very close to actually using, nuclear weapons in 1962, during Kennedy's blockade of Cuba, and in 1973, at the time of the Six-Day War in the Middle East, when Nixon put US forces on nuclear alert.
These are only some of the publicly known incidents, but they are sufficient to indicate that the US rulers frequently behave in ways which suggest that they do not believe Hall's admonition that "Nuclear weapons do not provide security". Why cannot they grasp this "simple truth"?
In reality, the truth is not quite that simple. Yes, nuclear weapons are a threat to the security of the human race: they could well bring about our extinction. But imperialist ruling classes tend not to spend much time worrying about the welfare of the human race in general. They are interested in their own security — against anyone who would interfere with their economic and political power. And they find weapons of all sorts, including nuclear ones, very handy in intimidating or destroying such threats.
Hall argues that no country (except Japan) was really threatened by US nuclear weapons, because of the political restraints on their use. Not even the Soviet Union was threatened — until it made the mistake of developing its own bomb. This turns reality upside down.
It has been public knowledge for decades that Japan was trying to surrender when the US nevertheless went ahead and bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The aim was not to "win the war" but to intimidate the Soviet government. Already in 1945 the US government was using the plausible threat of nuclear weapons in an effort to position itself to win the next war.
It would have been suicidal for the Soviet government to have refrained from developing its own nuclear weapons, in the hope that the US atomic bomb would prove to be a "scarecrow". (Among other things, it should be remembered that the political restraints on the US government did not consist solely of the humanitarian good will of its population. US war-mongering was unpopular because the general public realised it could lead to a war in which they too would be likely to be killed.)
The disappearance of the Soviet Union has not changed the nature of the US ruling class or ended the possibility of its being challenged. There is no credible evidence to support Hall's assertion that a "faction of the international power elite is genuine in its desire for nuclear disarmament". In any case, no such faction drafted the CTBT.
Washington opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons only because proliferation dilutes the military superiority it enjoys over other countries. The US (and the governments of the four other acknowledged nuclear powers) have attempted to use the worldwide popular demand for an end to nuclear tests as a means of guaranteeing themselves a permanent monopoly.
This is why they insisted on a CTBT which does not commit them to disarm, and which allows them to use computer simulations, rather than actual nuclear explosions, to develop new weapons. Our justified pleasure at the ending of nuclear tests should not lead us to accept illusions about other aspects of the treaty.
For its own — no doubt foolish and/or dishonourable — reasons, the Indian government exposed part of imperialism's dirty tricks on the CTBT. Hall seems to suggest that it could have done this better by taking a stance similar to that of the Pakistani government. I do not think that is the case, but even if it were granted, it would be a secondary matter.
To demonstrate at the Indian embassy would only help the nuclear powers to get away with the fraud they are practising on world opinion. It would be far better to demonstrate at the US embassy — demanding a CTBT that the Indian government can find no reason not to sign.