by Austin Bay
August 13, 2003Only the most craven zealots are prepared to sacrifice 2 million
lives for the sake of their political theology and the alleged moral
superiority of their cause.
The 2 million estimate is, of course, as rough as it is
appalling to contemplate. The lives lost in the savage event -- the brass
tack moment where imagined scenario becomes hysteric scene -- could be
50,000 or 5 million. Weather, population, the power of the nuclear weapon or
the virulence of the DNA-altered virus, medical facilities, the ability and
willingness of the international community to react with courage and with
mercy, each of these affect for somewhat better or much worse the casualty
figure.
I'm specifically thinking of the 2 million or so South Koreans a
North Korean nuke could kill, or the 2 million in Tokyo, or perhaps
Honolulu.
Tel Aviv is another target. With the demise of Saddam's regime,
the most likely source of a missile attack on Israel would be Iran.
In the wake of U.S.counter-terror strikes in 1986, Libyan
nutcase Muhammar Gaddafi fired missiles at one of Italy's Mediterranean
islets. A future strike on Italy isn't farfetched, with Rome a Ground Zero.
Diplomacy does lower the risk of such attacks, as well as a
frayed form of nuclear deterrence. The old deterrence regimen tore when the
Soviet Union disintegrated. Diplomacy and residual deterrence, however,
haven't halted the digging, in Libya, North Korea and Iran. Gaddafi is a
deep digger. His prize dig lies inside Jebel Tarhunah, southeast of Tripoli.
The mountain protects a factory. The factory used to be in a town of Rabtha,
and in the late 1980s the Pentagon concluded Rabtha made nerve gas. The
Rabtha plant burned, mysteriously. Gaddafi, in order to keep his privacy and
prevent new fires, dug deep.
In 1996, Clinton administration Secretary of Defense William
Perry said the U.S. would not rule out military action against Gaddafi's
deep hole, as a last resort.
Post 9-11 and post-Saddam, Gaddafi is behaving, sort of, though
he still has his Tarhunah hole.
North Korea's "deep digs" are harder targets than Tarhunah. Pray
the upcoming multilateral talks disarm Kim Jong-il and his clique. But Kim
has starved 2 million of his own people. To save 2 million more lives might
require Perry's last resort. So the Pentagon has experimented with salvos of
super-penetrating conventional bombs, where one bomb tails another by
micro-seconds, a jackhammer to destroy nukes or bugs before they're used.
The problem is, conventional bombs don't yet cut it. That's one
reason U.S. strategists must consider small-yield, deep-penetrating nuclear
weapons to reach what the Pentagon calls "a hardened and deeply buried
target."
But try to explain that need to the zealots, like the
"anti-nuke" true believers protesting outside Offutt Air Force Base in
Nebraska, where Strategic Command (STRATCOM) held a conference last week to
examine nuclear issues.
In the zealots' world, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are war crimes.
(They should take a look at author James Michener's recently released letter
on that subject.)
The few coherent voices among these fundamentalists argue
developing small penetrator nukes will damage international arms-control
efforts. They place great, unshakeable faith in arms control treaties,
documents with nice words.
Like former SecDef Perry, I prefer diplomacy, including tough
arms control regimens. The planet has too many nuclear weapons -- our own
stockpile should continue to shrink. I suspect, however, that Operation
Iraqi Freedom was a far more effective lesson in controlling the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction than the Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
I'm not convinced that North Korea and Iran are beyond forms of
arms control and flexible deterrence. That being said, a vital part of
vigorous, post-Cold War nuclear deterrence is a small deep-penetrating nuke
that can "go deep."
The anti-nuke unilateralist zealots don't agree. They have a
political theology, you know. To protect 2 million innocents in the last
resort, they'll issue a press release. When 2 million die from a North
Korean nuke, they will surely lament it.
The rest of us will wish we'd had the weapon to prevent it.
