'Sow the wind, reap the wind'

www.examiner.com Date: 01/27/2003 BY CONN HALLINAN Special to The Examiner

    WHEN THE BUSH administration threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons last year, it did more than ignite the present standoff in North Asia. It opened the Pandora's Box of proliferation.

    The genesis of the present crisis goes back to the administration's 2001 nuclear policy review, which proposed using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations, including Libya, Syria and North Korea.

    While the North Koreans have caught flak for withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, it was, in fact, the U.S. that violated the treaty by making the threat in the first place.

    Under the 1968 agreement, nuclear powers agreed never to threaten non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons unless those countries were in alliance with another nuclear power.

    In spite of the insular and rigid nature of the North Korean regime, it is George Bush, not Kim Jong Il, who has thumbed his nose at the international community. Washington, not Pyongyang, dismantled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements and is preparing to violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by testing its "bunker busting" nuke.

    How did this happen?

    It happened because the spineless Democrats remained silent and because the United Nations Security Council failed to challenge the nuclear policy review as a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Where will this lead? How about a nuclear arms race in Asia?

    North Korea is not the only proliferation problem on the Korean Peninsula. In March 1994, the head of the South Korean National Security Planning Agency revealed that former President Roh Tae Woo approved a covert nuclear weapons program.

    There are at least two other countries in Asia that can produce nuclear weapons if they choose -- Japan and Taiwan.

    According to the CIA, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa tested a nuclear weapon over the South Atlantic on Sept. 22, 1979, so we can assume the Taiwanese know how. And in May 2002, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, said that Japan was considering abandoning its long-term opposition to nuclear weapons.

    How about nuclear weapons in South America?

    Early this month, Brazil Minister of Science Roberto Amaral said Brazil could not afford to renounce any scientific knowledge, "whether the genome, DNA or nuclear fission."

    The left-wing government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva quickly distanced itself from Amaral's remark, but Brazilians are well aware of the unequal nature of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In September da Silva said that, "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?"

    Brazil and Argentina have nuclear programs dating to the 1950s and, during the period of their respective military dictatorships, pursued nuclear weapons research. Both countries signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but Brazil has cause to be jumpy, given the Bush administration's attitude toward left-wing regimes in Latin America.

    Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, says Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba are a Latin "axis of evil" and that da Silva is a "pro-Castro radical."

    Talk like that ought to make everyone nervous these days, particularly with right-wing extremists such as John Bolton, Otto Reich and Elliot Abrams heading up the administration's Latin America policy.

    If Brazil decides to take this axis stuff seriously, it may indeed decide to go nuclear. If Brazil builds a bomb, so will Argentina.

    "Sow the wind, reap the storm" goes the old dictum. The Bush administration has been sowing nuclear threats since early last year, and we are reaping the results of that policy.

    Comment: letters@examiner.com

    Conn Hallinan is a provost at UC Santa Cruz.