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May
17, 2003
America's Shocking
Hypocrisy on WMD
An
Interview with Richard Butler
By MARK DAVIS
Transcript of an
interview on Australia's Dateline on SBC.
A few days ago, the US Senate Armed Services Committee
voted to repeal a long-standing ban on the development of small
nuclear bombs---so called mini nukes. For 10 years the US has
abided by an international moratorium on the testing of nuclear
weapons---another international convention now likely to go up
in smoke. Tonight's guest, Richard Butler, has had a long involvement
in nuclear disarmament issues. Perhaps better known as the former
chief weapons inspector in Iraq, most of his career was spent
in helping to forge the international anti-nuclear conventions---including
a spell as Australia's Ambassador for Disarmament.
MARK DAVIS: Richard Butler, the US Armed
Services Committee has just passed a motion supporting the development
of what they're calling mini nukes. Does this signal the beginning
of another arms race? How serious should we take it?
RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER UN CHIEF ARMS
INSPECTOR: I can't overstate the seriousness of it. It is absolutely
shocking. If this becomes the policy of the United States Government,
if it passes through the Congress and the Bush Administration,
which wants it to be the policy, if it implements it, it will
involve the United States walking away from, tearing up, solemn
obligations that it's made for 30 years now under international
law, and on which the world relies---an obligation to progressively
reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world so that they
don't spread to other countries. Instead of honouring that obligation,
this would involve tearing it up, walking away from it and, in
fact, making new nuclear weapons, going in exactly the opposite
direction.
MARK DAVIS: Well, it's pretty dramatic
departure from---I think we all thought that nuclear proliferation
was behind it. Who's pushing for this?
RICHARD BUTLER: The Bush Administration.
It's been clear now for about two years that George W. Bush and
the people around him want to have nuclear weapons in the regular
battlefield arsenal of the United States armed forces. No more
a question of nuclear weapons simply being there to deter what
was the Soviet Union, the big scale intercontinental stuff. The
question of whether that really worked or not is something we
probably haven't got time to talk about. But for the whole of
the period of nuclear weapons since the end of the Second World
War, their stated purpose was for deterrence, mutual assured
destruction, the outcome of which was supposed to be that therefore
they would never be used. They would just deter each other. Now,
the Bush Administration wants to have nuclear weapons in the
regular battlefield arsenal of its armed forces in order to use
them in the same way that they'd use a conventional artillery
piece, a conventional missile, an ordinary cannon. That's what
they want to do and they're the ones pushing for it.
MARK DAVIS: Well, they have an argument
for that, of course, is that this now has a strategic use with
limited fallout, for use against terrorist groups or rogue states
where otherwise a lot of troops would be lost in taking that
position. There is a certain logic...
RICHARD BUTLER: There's none. I'm sorry
to interrupt you, but it's just profound nonsense. Look, even
Colin Powell, who's now Secretary of State, when he was in charge
of the United States armed forces wrote in his main book about
his experiences as a military commander that when he was in charge
in Europe, he dreaded, he dreaded that the order would come from
Washington to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield, tactical
rather than strategic nuclear weapons. He said there in his book---and
everyone knows this, Mark---they are useless and dangerous. All
they do is escalate. There is nothing that you can't achieve
with today's high precision conventional weapons that would require
you to go, to take that step, to cross what is called the nuclear
threshold and use nuclear weapons. If you cross that threshold,
you enter into weapons of mass destruction, you transform the
battlefield into a place where the other side can do the same
and, look, the fundamental irony of the situation we're dealing
with here is that we have just witnessed the United States go
to Iraq to remove Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and it
is now itself proposing to acquire new weapons of mass destruction.
It makes no sense in logic, in politics, in proliferation terms
and it makes no sense on the battlefield. There is nothing that
needs to be achieved on the battlefield today that can't be achieved
with conventional non-nuclear, non-mass destruction weapons.
MARK DAVIS: Well, at the moment, it's
passed a committee stage which is significant in itself, but
from your discussions with US officials and your contacts in
the States, how far up the food chain is this likely to progress?
Are we being overly dramatic in even talking about it now?
RICHARD BUTLER: No, I find it pretty
astonishing that people haven't been talking about it already,
that's why I welcome being with you here tonight and congratulate
you for doing it. Because you see, Mark, we are witnessing a
profound change in the way in which the world has been run since
the Second World War. A cornerstone of that world has been the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a bit of a mouthful, but that's
the treaty that states---that those who have nuclear weapons
will progressively get rid of them and those who do not have
them, will never get them. So that we'll come one day to a point
where no-one will have nuclear weapons. The United States and
the other four official nuclear weapons powers, the five of them,
are obligated under that treaty to progressively reduce. Now,
if the United States goes ahead and does what is being planned,
and walks away from that obligation and, in fact, starts to make
new nuclear weapons, I promise you, Mark, it will be the end
of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty that we extended a few
years ago to be indefinite in the life of humankind---after 30
years of operation, it was extended in 1995 to be indefinite---and
the elemental bargain there is that those who don't have them
won't get them, and those who do have them will get rid of them.
And if the United States does this, people will walk away from
that treaty, we'll see---you saw what India and Pakistan did,
we know what Israel has done, we know what Iran is looking for,
North Korea, it will spread, because you cannot say to another
country "It's OK for me to have nuclear weapons because
my security is so important..."
MARK DAVIS: But that's the point, isn't
it?
RICHARD BUTLER: "..but you can't."
MARK DAVIS: That's exactly what America
is doing now. What does it do for the authority of the American
voice to talk to North Korea, to talk to Iran about nuclear weapons?
RICHARD BUTLER: It trashes it. It trashes
it. This administration in Washington is honestly asking other
human beings to believe that American security is so precious,
that it can have in its possession whatever weapons of mass destruction
it might want, but others can't. You know, I heard that argument
for years. I've worked on this subject for over a quarter of
a century. I heard it for years, in particular in India. I've
written a book about it. And the Indians were quite compelling,
saying "We can't accept that somehow American security is
more important than ours. We've got China on our border with
nuclear weapons, they've attacked us several times. We can't
accept the basic inequity that is involved in that position."
The United States is about to bring that inequity to a height
and it will have nothing to say, nothing that it can credibly
say to any other country---"You may not have these weapons"---or
indeed to a terrorist group, if it itself walks away from what
it has solemnly promised under international law. I welcome your
calling attention to this. People must debate this. This is a
very serious move.
MARK DAVIS: Under the various treaties,
nuclear non-proliferation and the test ban treaties, what are
the consequences for a country that either walks away from or
breaks the terms of that treaty?
RICHARD BUTLER: What is supposed to be
the consequence is that the International Atomic Energy Agency
will report to the Security Council that a country---in this
case North Korea recently did it---has walked away from its obligation
and asked the Security Council, who has the political and military
muscle, allegedly, to deal with it, to go to that country and
say "You're breaking the law, this has to stop or else."
Now...
MARK DAVIS: So is that going to happen
to America?
RICHARD BUTLER: It's not going to happen
at all! It won't happen because the way in which the Security
Council was trashed on trying to get it support for the invasion
of Iraq, this wasn't obtained, and under international law that
invasion therefore is outside the law, some would say plainly
illegal. But in very practical terms I ask you, what capacity
has the United States now to go to the Security Council and say
"Let's all collectively deal with this threat to security,
the country X is about to acquire nuclear weapons." It's
got no capacity, because of its own double standard on nuclear
weapons and because of the way in which the Security Council
was abused on the way into Iraq. The Security Council, in this
sense, is lying somewhat in ruins, at precisely the time that
we need it.
MARK DAVIS: Well, I guess you'd have
to say clearly the Americans don't care what the consequences
of a treaty...
RICHARD BUTLER: You're dead right.
MARK DAVIS: But what do you do now?
RICHARD BUTLER: Well, I've talked to
senior members of the Bush Administration and if the viewing
public are asking "Well, why are they behaving this way?"
Well, one can say they're just plainly selfish or this is the
consequence of September 11 and so on. Not really. It's this---this
administration has a view of the special character of the United
States, the singular and exclusive character that is new. I've
talked to them about it and they make this plain. They say "We
are the sole super power, we're therefore the exceptional country,
we're outside of international law. Others have to obey the law
and obey the rules, but we don't." I mean, I'm not making
that up. If they were sitting here tonight, Mark, the people
I've talked with would readily agree. They'd say "Yeah,
that's right, that's who we are. We are the exceptional country
and we don't have to obey the law because we're different."
Now, that's where this is proceeding from. And I ask you to recognise
what happens when the most powerful country, the same as the
most powerful people within a domestic society, consider themselves
to be above the law. What happens? Citizens, or countries, decide
that the law itself is no good and that's what will happen in
the nuclear area.
MARK DAVIS: Well, while I have you here
I'll get you to put your Iraq hat on for a moment. Are you surprised
that the Americans haven't found any weapons of mass destruction
so far?
RICHARD BUTLER: No, I'm not, Mark. There's
no doubt that unaccounted for weapons existed when Saddam threw
me and my team out in 1998 and, indeed, when Hans Blix, my successor,
made his last reports. But I think what we are seeing now is
the very strong possibility that towards the end, just before
the war began, Iraq either began to destroy those weapons or
moved them out possibly to Syria. Destroyed them in the way that
it started, you'll remember, to destroy the al-Samoud missile,
in the belief that the weapons wouldn't be of any further use
to them and it would be better for their case if they could say---if
no weapons were able to be discovered.
MARK DAVIS: I mean, this is the incredible
point, I suppose. We've just invaded a country, we've killed
thousands of people and, despicable as Saddam Hussein may have
been, he was probably telling the truth.
RICHARD BUTLER: We need to know that,
that's what I'm saying. It could well be that at that point,
immediately prior to the war when they lodged their 12,000 page
document, that we may discover they were telling the truth in
the sense that at that time they did destroy those extant weapons.
We need to know what the facts are to know whether the weapons
of mass destruction justification for the invasion was real or
not. It's very, very important. We have four people---the US
has four key people in custody now---General Saddi, General Rashid,
Tariq Aziz and Dr Germ, Rihab Taha. They know exactly what the
facts are. We need to know what they're saying. We need to know
on what basis they're being interrogated. We need the truth about
those weapons, Iraq's programs, did they give them to terrorists,
for example, as has sometimes been claimed. We need the truth
behind an invasion and occupation by the United States, and its
friends, of Iraq.
Richard Butler, we'll have to leave it
there but thanks for joining Dateline.
Yesterday's
Features
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaioui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
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of the Day
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