Monday, August 13, 2012

Banning Nuclear Weapons

If only we could.  Of course nuclear-weapons-owning countries could get together like the wonderful allies they are, and decide among them that conventional, non-nuclear weapons are more reasonable.  They have worked well in the past and are still used, albeit undergoing greater development, and there is no need to impose a nuclear winter anywhere on Earth.  Been there, done that.

We weren't pleased with the result.  Dissolving over a hundred thousand lives at one fell swoop; devastating the environment, flattening the infrastructure of cities, irradiating the atmosphere and causing future generations to rue the day they were born.  Utterly uncivilized, unconscionable, inhuman, inexcusable.  The countries where people tend to be reasonable, their elected heads responsible, all agree.

They agree to diminish the numbers in their arsenals.  From enough nuclear warheads to demolish the Earth several times only, to just enough to throw our transit around the Sun out of kilter so much will change, the results of which were never anticipated.  For one thing, the disturbances to the Earth's surface would be sufficient to unleash a response fairly cataclysmic in nature with a series of thunderous earthquakes enabling the oceans to sweep across whatever might be left of the continents.

So, then countries like France, England, the United States, India and Russia might agree to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty to release a good number of their weapons into a non-functional state. Why not disable them all?  That leaves countries like Pakistan and North Korea and China; what then?  With Pakistan, India's neighbour laughing itself silly, is India likely to de-weaponize?

Would North Korea and China swagger less than they do now with the advantage of still being in possession of nuclear armaments while countries like France, England, the U.S. and Russia surrendered theirs?  We'd never really know, because France, England, the U.S. and Russia would never, under any circumstances, agree to making themselves vulnerable.

The guilt of having used atomic bombs on two occasions to deliver the final message that time was up hasn't quite been ameliorated by the reiteration of the "had no choice", and "saved other lives in the process", explanations.  And the fear of leaving themselves open to the malign intentions of other countries with fewer scruples than one's own, would ensure that the "ban the bomb" movement is a delusional one.

From Eve in the Garden of Eden, flirting with the snake in the Tree of Knowledge, to Pandora, succumbing to curiosity and opening that chest whose contents were denied her, the cat cannot be convinced to crawl back into the bag, the genie into its bottle.

We are left with a world whose scientists' curiosity about nuclear fusion led to the dreadful success demonstrated in 1945 at the Alamogordo desert site and from there the cat truly was out of the bag.  Nuclear physicists seek answers to questions and conduct their research and experiments in the pure science of possibilities.  They do not make the decisions to use the results.

But once accessed, the secrets and the research findings and the production of the results are reality.  The fiction is that science can persuade politics and world leaders to backtrack and to surrender and bury that which has been achieved.  It is a noble gesture, but one without repercussions, to ask politely that world governments give up nuclear weapons.


UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Five-Point Plan for Nuclear Disarmament, inclusive of its convention to ban all nuclear weapons, is an exercise in wishful thinking.  We all wish it could be possible.  We all know, particularly the sober heads who receive the thoughtful gesture that it represents a gesture of hope, one that cannot be reconciled with reality.

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posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 13, 2012

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