Double Standards Won’t Lead To A Nuclear-Free World

It is nonsense to assume that Israel can be given a free pass. Despite the efforts of apologists, Israel’s claim of exceptionalism doesn’t hold up to regional scrutiny. Israeli security will only come through a negotiated and just settlement with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese

By James Zogby
First Published 2010-04-12
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

With the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) signed by the United States and Russia, a nuclear summit about to begin in Washington, and pressure mounting to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a few troubling issues need to be addressed.

Firstly, in negotiating and then signing a new arms reduction pact with Russia as well as announcing a new US posture on the use of nuclear weapons, President Obama has come under withering attacks from right-wing politicians. But accusing the president of unilaterally disarming or weakening the US’s global position is sheer nonsense.

What Start provides is a way for both the US and Russia to dramatically reduce their nuclear weapons arsenal to 1,550. A few decades ago, Moscow and Washington had a total of over 70,000 such weapons – a perfectly bizarre amount. As we all understood back then, using these weapons was unthinkable, since they would result in “mutually assured destruction”.

And yet, we continued to build and deploy. Unwinding this insanity was the right thing to do and it still is.

The president’s vision of a nuclear-free world (one he shared with the late president Ronald Reagan) is the correct stance. Start represents a movement in the right direction; his critics are dead wrong.

The nuclear summit is designed to promote the control of nuclear weapons and to secure worldwide buy-in. Israel’s decision to send a low-level representative in order to avoid criticism of its nuclear programme and the US’s silence on Israel’s stance are both disappointing and dangerous.

It is nonsense to assume that Israel can be given a free pass. Despite the efforts of apologists, Israel’s claim of exceptionalism doesn’t hold up to regional scrutiny.

As a result of US guarantees, Israel has a conventional military capability that exceeds that of all of its neighbours combined. And it has freely used this force in successive wars, dealing devastating blows to its neighbours. Despite this, Israelis have not found peace, since peace and security will only come through a negotiated and just settlement with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese.

And so of what use is Israel’s nuclear programme (or its silence about that programme and its refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty)? Possessing nuclear weapons has not created a deterrent. Nor can Israel use these weapons.

Can Israel bomb Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon, without endangering its own population with the resultant radioactive fallout? And what would be the human and international consequences of Israel’s use of nuclear weapons? It remains unthinkable to use such weapons, and therefore nonsense to stockpile or hide them.

In fact, the only purpose served by Israel’s stubborn insistence that it maintain silence about its nuclear programme, as well as the US’s continued reticence, is to impede progress toward establishing the Middle East as a “nuclear-free zone”. When Egypt first raised this idea years ago, its consideration was blocked by Israel and the US. That was a mistake then and it still is now.

A further complication of the US giving Israel a pass on nuclear weapons is that it raises the charge of “double standards” – one so clear that even the most hard-nosed defenders of Israel cannot deny it.

With growing concern over Iran’s nuclear intentions, this double standard has become more than an embarrassment; it has become self-defeating and dangerous.

Why give Tehran an easy argument to defend its indefensible behaviour? When every Arab and Muslim knows that the US is turning a blind eye to Israel’s nukes (and will immediately raise this issue whenever the question of nuclear disarmament is discussed), why continue to ignore the elephant in the room?

And finally to Iran. Iran is a regional problem, to be sure. Its meddling in Iraq, the Gulf region, and in Lebanon and Palestine pose real concerns that must be addressed and – one had hoped – might have been addressed by President Obama’s early promise to engage the Islamic Republic.

But instead of focusing on the broad range of issues that define Iran’s troubling behaviours in the Middle East, the US zeroed in on the nuclear question, the one where we hold a weak hand. In doing so, the US played into Tehran’s game, allowing that government to pose as a victim of a double standard (as America argues that it is not in compliance with their obligations under the NPT, which they have signed, while it works with Israel, Pakistan and India, who have nuclear programmes and are the only three countries in the world who have not signed the NPT – not a strong case, by any measure).

Iran is playing a dangerous and nonsensical game of “chicken”. But we have not responded smartly.

Surely, no one wants to see Iran with weapons that it can never use without insuring that massive devastation be visited upon the country.

But the best way to insure that a dangerous arms race does not occur in this region is to move towards a nuclear-free Middle East.

The way forward is to drop the shield of secrecy that surrounds Israel’s programme, insist that Israel join the world community and sign the NPT, and negotiate a comprehensive peace with its neighbours. This is how to end nuclear madness and advance the president’s vision.

James Zogby is president of the Arab American institute in Washington, DC. This article appeared in The Nationalnewspaper of Abu Dhabi.