By Jeanne Roberts
Posted on Jan. 6, 2010. Listed in:
There is plenty to worry about in today’s world, from climate change to species extinction through deforestation and the increasing absence of potable water, not to mention rising levels of infertility thanks to modern chemistry, the potential for a serious pandemic (as witness H1N1), and a financial recession that sees one in ten unemployed in the developed world.
Nuclear fears would put that worry level well over the top. Fortunately, most of the world is finally getting behind a nuclear freeze that promises to free us from mutual extinction via nuclear-tipped missiles.
The latest entity to ratify this no-more-nukes philosophy is Africa, where – 13 years after the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty was first introduced – Burundi has become the final signatory, making the entire continent a no-nuke zone.
Also known as the Pelindaba Treaty, this final, historic signing took place on Nov. 8, and ensures that the entire continent and all its surrounding islands will not develop, test, acquire or station any nuclear weapons on any of the more than 30 million square kilometers comprising 28 nations, from tiny Togo in Equatorial West Africa to giant Sudan in the northeast.
The treaty also prohibits ships from any foreign nation, or its military, from entering any African port without prior notification and permission, but does not rule out the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes like electricity generation, medical imaging, and agriculture, where nuclear devices can do everything from measure the flow of subsurface water to preserving food against spoilage and bacterial outbreaks.
In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, projects that the use of nuclear energy to create electricity will rise by 40 percent by 2030, an increase of 140 gigawatts over 2009, and much of this increase will be directed at third world countries where electrification is the last step in improving the lives of its people. This includes the Middle East, South Asia, India and Pakistan.
Other countries who have already reached the no-nuke stage include Argentina and Brazil, who – after two decades of jockeying for the position of “top dog” in South America – signed nuclear nonproliferation treaties in 1991 as part of rebuilding democratic governments.
The five nations who have nuclear weapons are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT; the U.S., Russia, France, China and the UK), and have already agreed not to transfer or sell nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices to any country not having nuclear weapons, and also to complete nuclear disarmament over time under “strict and effective” international control.
One hundred and eighty four nations are also signatories , with only India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea abstaining – India largely because its nearest and most dangerous neighbor, Pakistan, refuses to relinquish the possibility of nuclear dominance.
Israel, for its part, remains ambiguous on its nuclear policy, flanked by warlike neighbors in the form of Pakistan and Iran. Korea, perhaps too distant to be a threat, was an NPT signatory but withdrew in 2003 and has been a thorn in the side of world peacemakers ever since, as has Iran, which signed the NPT but has since evaded the mandate of the program by failing to declare its uranium enrichment program, which it says is meant for peaceful purposes like nuclear power generation.
Saber-rattling from North Korea’s Kim Jong Il and Iran’s Ahmadinejad aside, the world seems largely content to share this playground, earth, by relying on pressure from neighbors (in the form of U.S. trade sanctions, and Japanese withholding of investment and technology transfers, for example) to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons into the hands of playground bullies.
The process is working. It has been 17 years since American children crouched under their desks in fear of Cuban missiles, and more than 60 years since atomic weapons were (purportedly) used to stop World War II.
This writer remains confident that Korea and Iran will also bend to sanctions, in the first instance because the North Korean people are starving, and in the second because feisty Iran really does want to remain part of Middle East oil-exporting cartel OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to keep the dollars flowing into its coffers.
The work, however, is not over. On Dec. 2, the General Assembly met to approve 54 texts , one of them aimed at banning the fissile material used in nuclear weapons. Of the votes, 175 approved, one (N. Korea) voted against, and three (India, Syria and the tiny island of Mauritius off the coast of Madagascar) abstained, providing a worldview that is largely positive, at least in terms of nuclear Armageddon.
As a result, you can start this new year knowing that mankind as a whole has stepped back from the brink, reversing a prediction made by Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb, who said of his invention (paraphrasing the Bhagavad Gita): “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Instead, the technology that once killed thousands, with the potential to kill millions, has been used to advance civilization and improve the lives of people everywhere. If Oppenheimer were alive today, he might change that observation to: “Now I am become life, the Creator of Better Worlds.”
If that thought doesn’t inspire rejoicing, I don’t know what will.
More cool stories on Celsias:
