Nuclear
Exporting Nuclear Triggers
Richard Smyth, indicted in May 1985 for illegally exporting nuclear trigger devices to Israel, is now a fugitive. In August 1985, two days before he was scheduled to appear in court, Smyth and his wife sailed his boat to Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, and disappeared, forfeiting his $100,000 bail. Some US intelligence agents believe Smyth was murdered. Other reports now place him in Israel. “There was no way Israel could afford an appearance by Smyth in court,” said one US operative.
The PLO and the European Peace Movement
In July 1985, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement (END) convened in Amsterdam. One plenary session featured a discussion between Ilan Halevi and Mary Kaldor concerning peace movement support for liberation struggles in the Third World, and for the Palestine Liberation Organization in particular. The question had provoked considerable controversy at END’s meetings a year earlier, and the conference organizers responded by inviting Halevi and Kaldor to discuss frankly the issues at stake, including pacifism, political violence and the reluctance of Western peace forces to confront Israeli militarism and occupation policies.
Pakistan’s Nuclear Fix
Earlier this year, stories citing US intelligence documents reported that Pakistan now had the capacity to enrich uranium to 93 percent. In other words, Pakistan could produce its own weapons-grade nuclear material. This is perhaps the single most difficult step in manufacturing nuclear bombs.
Few persons who had been following Pakistan’s efforts were surprised by this news, or doubted its accuracy. In February 1984, Pakistan’s general-president, Zia ul-Haq, confirmed that Pakistan had made its first enrichment breakthrough, to the 5 percent level needed for research and nuclear power purposes. From that point it was only a matter of time before the country’s nuclear technicians achieved weapons-grade enrichment capacity.
Recipe for an Israeli Nuclear Arsenal
Ten years ago, 62 percent of Israelis questioned in a poll were convinced that their nation had the nuclear bomb; 77 percent thought that if it didn’t already have it, it should. Only four percent believed Israel was nuclear-free. [1] In October 1986, an Israeli nuclear technician revealed to the Sunday Times of London that Israel indeed has an extensive nuclear weapons program. Mordechai Vanunu, who worked in a secret underground Israeli bomb factory for nine years, convinced top US and British nuclear scientists who questioned him closely that Israel has built at least 100 and possibly as many as 200 nuclear weapons. This would make Israel the sixth-ranking nuclear power in the world.
Nuclear Shadow Over the Middle East
In the summer of 1984, Newsweek published the results of a Gallup poll of hundreds of top-ranking American military officers. Among the questions was this: where did they see the greatest threat of a conflict situation which might escalate to nuclear war? The majority responded clearly: the Middle East. [1]
Adams, Israel and South Africa
James Adams, Israel and South Africa: The Unnatural Alliance (London: Quartet Books/Namara, 1985).
James Adams, a senior executive at the Sunday Times of London, scores an overwhelming victory in undermining the thesis of his own title. After even a few pages, his book convinces us, albeit unintentionally, that the Israel-South Africa courtship (and its many consummations) is quite a natural alliance after all, though not without the usual bumps. Mercifully, his remarks on the presumed improbability of the relationship betweeen “a people in flight from racism” and a state “founded on the ideas of racial superiority” absorb little of the author’s energy or the reader’s time.
Intervention and the Nuclear Firebreak in the Middle East
The “deadly connection” — the link between interventionism, conventional warfare and nuclear war — has now become a major issue for the peace movement. This, in turn, has compelled those working on nuclear disarmament questions to begin to deal with the Middle East and US policy there. The reason for this is simple. When we look at specific regions of the world, it is obvious that the Middle East is the area where the connection arises in its most acute and dangerous form — the area where a nuclear war is most likely to break out.
From the Editors (November/December 1983)
On Sunday night, November 20, we paused along with millions of others in the US to watch ABC’s television drama of nuclear devastation. “The Day After” abstracted its fictional crisis from current headlines by having its US-Soviet confrontation occur over Berlin rather than Lebanon or Nicaragua. On the other hand, it faithfully portrayed ordinary people’s frustrating and fruitless dependence on television itself to understand and know what was supposedly happening to trigger such a deadly duel. In its own way the day before was as harrowing as the day after.
Conventional Arms Sales
For years, US leaders have attempted to muffle opposition to overseas arms sales by arguing that transfers of conventional, non-nuclear munitions reduce the risk of nuclear war. If we provide our allies with adequate conventional defenses, the argument goes, they will not be motivated to acquire nuclear defenses. But conventional arms sales to the Middle East have not reduced the risk of nuclear war. In fact, the opposite is true: Cascading arms sales to the region are making nuclear war more, not less likely.
On the Beach
There are two kinds of beaches in US defense planning. The first is the shoreline that US Marines typically storm in a real or rehearsed military intervention. The second belongs to the domain of the nuclear strategists. When their “limited” nuclear war games go astray, simulating escalation into all-out thermonuclear war, the strategists privately label this outcome a “beach,” after the title of Nevil Shute’s popular novel of nuclear apocalypse, On the Beach. In this era, when two military superpowers envelope the globe with the reach of their nuclear weapons, the question inevitably arises: Is it possible for the Rapid Deployment Force to storm the beaches of the Persian Gulf without leaving all of us on the beach of nuclear annihilation?
