THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1985. Nuclear dilemmas

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1985. Nuclear dilemmas

The offer by President Reagan to join the Soviet Union in a moratorium on all nuclear testing — after the current series of tests — seems a generous gesture, but has a sadly familiar ring about it. President Reagan said that the Soviet Union was able to declare a five-month moratorium because it was ahead in the development and modernisation of nuclear weapons. He said that if, after the limited moratorium, the Soviet Union wanted to have a permanent moratorium, then the United States would be prepared to do that after it had completed its testing, and the Soviet Union was not doing any more. The next step is easily imagined. The Soviet Union will observe its moratorium and then declare that it has to conduct some more tests so that it can catch up with the advances made by the United States. It is simply another step in the arms race and another chapter in the history of attempts to control arms. The offer was made on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Much has been written about the dilemmas faced over the first use of a nuclear weapon. Forty years on the numbers and power of nuclear weapons have increased almost beyond comprehension, and no-one is any closer to resolving the dilemmas posed. Many credit nuclear weapons with keeping peace in Europe and with preventing a third world war. Whether they have done that or not, this has not prevented the outbreak of regional wars which have claimed millions of lives since August of 1945. Nuclear weapons have been viewed as a deterrent. At one level they have been seen as a deterrent by the West against conventional attacks from the Soviet Union. The maintenance of conventional forces of a size to balance the forces of the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies has been considered unacceptable by the West. Hence the reliance on nuclear weapons. At another level deterrence against nuclear attack is accepted by both the West and the East. The belief is that even if a first strike destroys many of the other side’s nuclear weapons, there will be

enough left with which to retaliate and the retaliation will be too great to bear, and so deterrence will have worked. Once the belief in deterrence is accepted, then the struggle to maintain parity or to tip the balance in one’s own favour begins and the arms race and the caution about arms control also begin. The dilemma then is to return to a lower level of the arms stockpile and this has outwitted the powers which have devised the ingenious developments of nuclear weapons. There was a moral dilemma involved in the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the prospect that the bombs would help to end the war quickly, and thus save hundreds of thousands of lives, made the decision relatively easy. The moral dilemma that presents itself 40 years later is not so easily resolved. The size of nuclear weapons means that if they are used in a war they will kill many people. Civilians get killed wantonly in many wars, but nuclear weapons have the capacity to slaughter civilians on a far greater scale. In terms of military tactics much of the damage that they inflict is unnecessary and is coincidental to the purpose of the strike. In military terms it is called collateral damage. To some people this is not merely repugnant — it is immoral. Nuclear weapons present these people with a challenge to their beliefs. There is another type of moral dilemma, particularly in Europe. There some take the view that even if nuclear weapons deter the Soviet Union from any aggressive action, the use of nuclear weapons would destroy much of Europe in any case. Thus the cure seems no better than the disease. These questions remain unresolved in Europe. In the meantime both the Soviet Union and the United States are accumulating more weapons, using valuable resources, and a further dilemma emerges. The more nuclear weapons there are, and the more intricate the systems of delivery, the greater the chances of a nuclear holocaust occurring, not by choice as an act of war, but by accident or as an act of madness by a desperate terrorist group. As more countries seek to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems, the risk increases.