Pulse of the Peninsula: Ban nuclear weapons, rein in North Korea

Karen Rubin

Here’s a radical idea for dealing with North Korea: ban all nuclear weapons.

The annual Hiroshima commemoration, organized by SANE Peace Action based in Great Neck, a 60-year old organization, and Long Island Peace Alternatives, formed 32 years ago, which for many years now has taken place at the Universalist Unitarian Church at Shelter Rock never fails to inspire a range of emotions — horror, regret, guilt, anger, activism, and hope. Hope that after 72 years, the world will come to its senses as to this existential threat.

This year’s gathering, on Aug. 2, started off surprisingly upbeat: 122 United Nations members  had just adopted a treaty calling for a ban on nuclear weapons. But the hopefulness of that was shattered by the next sentence: Not one of the nine countries that actually possess nuclear weapons — United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — supports it, in fact boycotted the deliberations. It’s as if the wimps and wusses of the world signed a petition to stop bullies from bullying.

And while during the eight years of President Obama’s administration, the U.S. was making strong headway to reducing nuclear threats (that is the heart of the Ukraine issue, where the collapse of the “Soviet Union resulted in an enormous cache of “loose nukes” which is why the United States and West promised to protect Ukraine against incursion), he was already being thwarted by Senate Republicans who actually balked at signing the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia, indeed some are rattling sabers to undo the treaty which requires Russia and the United States to reduce their deployed nuclear warheads to 1,500 from 2,200 each by next year (New York Times, A Threat to Nuclear Arms Control, July 29, 2017).

Instead, the Republican Congress is considering whether the U.S. should develop a new ground-launched cruise missile and withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty banning missiles with a range of up to about 3,000 miles.

What success Obama had to reduce the threat of a nuclear holocaust — most dramatically, the historic Iran Nuclear Agreement — and on so many other things, Obama was under-appreciated and his efforts kind of matter-of-factly taken for granted, even dismissed.

Meanwhile, Trump has vowed to pull out, just as he has said the US would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord.

Trump’s entire focus — his federal budget, his foreign policy, domestic policy — is actually to dismantle the mechanisms of diplomacy and global cooperation (the dreaded “globalism), in favor of militancy, including seeking $1 trillion to spend on a new generation of nuclear weapons which will only reignite a nuclear arms race, on top of over $600 billion in new military spending.

The Trump Doctrine boils down to “To the victor belongs the spoils.”

While diplomacy is hard, complicated, nuanced and requires mental acuity, sending soldiers into war is easy (that is, for someone who has no conscience, empathy or moral center).

Which brings us to North Korea.

No one with any brain or conscience believes that there is any military solution that would not be catastrophic.

Trying to strong-arm Kim Jong-un into giving up his nuclear weapons is fantastical, especially when Kim believes (with good reason) that the only reason his country hasn’t been invaded and his regime toppled is because of his nuclear power.

Even with the Trump Administration’s “success” at getting the United Nations Security Council to vote unanimously (that means China and Russia which are bolstering North Korea) to impose new sanctions on North Korea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acts like a robot mouthing a policy that demands North Korea stop its weapons testing before the US will agree to any talks.

What does that mean, exactly? Stop for a week, a month, a year? What would qualify?

Talks are key — after all, what would the alternative be?

Sanctions tend not to work with despots with total control over life and death of their subjects.

But what would the talks be about?

More threats? What would be the incentive for North Korea which has now promised to take retribution against the U.S. 1,000-fold for the sanctions?

And what is patently clear is that any demand that begins and ends with “give up nuclear weapons program” will be a nonstarter.

Kim Jong-un has seen what has happened to other tyrants who do not command such weapons or who give up their weapons, like Libya’s Omar Qaddafi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

And we now have evidence that it is entirely possible not to have a rational person in control of ordering a launch. And not just in North Korea.

So here’s a radical idea: eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. If the nine nations that have nuclear weapons agree to dispose of them, that could be the solution.

Otherwise, we are likely headed toward a nuclear confrontation in which there will be no winners, only losers.

At the end of the evening, Margaret Melkonian, LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives issued a call to action: urge your Congressmembers to support The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call on the President to take nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert and to pursue nuclear disarmament.

“It is ironic and so disheartening with the outcome of 122 countries signing on and moving forward to making progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons, was the statement by the U.S., U.K. and France: ’While we share your vision of getting rid of nuclear weapons, the time isn’t right. This treaty not the best tactic — we will never sign this treaty, never eliminate nuclear weapons.’ But we say the time is right, the time is now,” she declared.

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