International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Bulletin 19 - Editorial

Strike Here - Strike There - Strike Everywhere

The axis of evil is good to justify every act of evil

Is nothing the same as before September 11? For many observers the world has drastically changed by the terror attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC), but there are more signs of continuity. The world's dominant power became even stronger, and accelerated its military power play. While the world stayed united in solidarity, US President Bush instrumentalized the terror attacks to squeeze the world into the narrow framework of what he perceives US national interests. Thus, the "coalition against terror" was less an indication of US multilateralism but rather of multilateralized unilateralism. For US military strategists aiming for global dominance it proved to be a great gift. It transformed Afghanistan into a US military base in one of the most sensitive regions of the world, with great strategic significance and lots of resources. No surprise that conspiracy theories of all kinds bloomed, additionally inspired by the obscurity of the terror plot and the potential involvement of secret services of the US, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

Key pillars of US counterterror strategy are military strikes and the quest for missile defense and space weapons, neglecting the fact that none of these would have prevented or protected against the civil airstrikes on the WTC. What Bush sells as instruments against terror creates and provokes more terror rather than providing security (see my statement in this Bulletin). It cannot prevent that a group of well-organized terrorists can do a lot of damage, which however is more a crime than an act of war. There are signs that the reckless bombing of Afghanistan caused more vitims than those killed in the WTC. After a few days no military targets were left, and US pilots dropped their bomb loads wherever appropriate, killing mostly civilians and annihilating a number of villages. They left hatred in many parts of the Islamic world, a breeding ground for more terror.

Bush's counter-terror policy became a blueprint to escalate the cycle of violence in other parts of the world. For Israel's Prime Minister Sharon it became the ideal hammer to smash the Palestinians who were stigmatized as terrorists. In Pakistan, the war in Afghanistan supported the autocratic and anti-democratic Musharraf regime, and for India's Prime Minister Vajpayee the attack on the parliament served as a welcome justification to blow up the military muscle, bringing the whole region close to nuclear disaster. Even Russia's President Putin, hunting for acceptance by the West, happily joined the anti-terror coalition, interpreting the war in Chechnia as a noble act against the evil.

These developments confirm the view that terror and counter-terror mutually enforce each other. State terrorists such as Saddam Hussein and non-state terrorists such as Osama bin Laden once were a product of US policy. Now they are used to justify the same policy. The supposed "axis of evil" is a masterpiece in political propaganda but is far from being the truth. Even half a year after September 11 there are no indications for a continuous battle between good and evil. It is essentially the US plus a few NATO allies using supposed terror threats as an excuse to justify military strikes. The axis of evil is a catch-all phrase to justify the own acts of evil. First Afghanistan, then Iraq, later perhaps Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, China or Russia. Why not attack Germany because a number of terrorists lived in Hamburg, or Florida because they were trained there as pilots?

Nobody would take this absurdity for serious excepts the victims of air strikes who have nothing to do with terrorism. They perceive the bombings as a death penalty without any justification, and consequently may see the US as an evil empire. The war against terror hits the wrong people while the real terrorists were either killed during their suicide attacks or are still alive.

In the long run, comparably fatal is the push for a wide range of high-tech weapons, with missile defense (MD) taking the lead. For Bush MD is not only an instrument of military strength but also a means to get rid of arms control treaties and multilateral negotiations. The title page of this Bulletin, showing the tower of arms control, non-proliferation and international security, hit by missile defense and space weapons, was designed before September 11, originally planned for INESAP Bulletin No.18. It is now more up-to-date than before because Bush did exactly what this figure suggests: abrogate the ABM Treaty, block possible progress for the Biological Weapons Convention, announce the possible testing of nuclear weapons, to mention some developments. In this regard the world has not changed but moved faster towards disaster.

After the terror attacks much of public attention was focused on the potential threats by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), in particular biological weapons (Jacqueline Simon). The anthrax letter attacks demonstrated that the biothreat was likely caused by internal rather than external sources (see Barbara Rosenberg's excerpt). Since the US wants to keep any right to maintain its bioweapons research, statedly for purely ‘‘defensive purposes", it takes the risk that other states follow this slippery slope, destroying the prospects for control. The failure of the BWC Conference may convince other countries to follow the US on their dangerous path of maintaining bioweapons research. The boost for supposedly defensive research against bioweapons further blurrs the thin line with offensive bioweapons research and complicates the dualuse problem (Jan van Aken and Edward Hammond). However the world outside the US should continue its work, and there are still opportunities (Iris Hunger). Civil society and NGOs can cooperate to improve verification (Oliver Meier) and develop an ethical conduct against bioweapons (Kathryn Nixdorff and Wolfgang Bender).

The situation in nuclear arms control and disarmament is also sad but not hopeless. Some articles in this Bulletin show the link between the terror attacks and nuclear weapons (Douglas Roche, David Krieger), in particular in South Asia (Zia Mian, Pervez Hoodbhoy). The dual-use problem in the nuclear sector is not less critical than for biotechnology, as Andreas Toupadakis, Andre Gsponer and Masa Takubo show by examples. The prospects for nuclear abolition are currently remote, as Pamela Meidell and Janet Bloomfield point out in their 2001 Report Card. Clifford Singer emphasizes that we should not wait until the year 2100 to pursue nuclear abolution since some specific measures could be taken in the near term. For Dingli Shen the best way to counter terror is by cooperative means.

The December 2001 Conference of the project Moving Beyond Missile Defense in Shanghai merged the expertise in INESAP not only on the causes and implications of missile defense but also on alternatives to the missile race (see conference summary by Carah Ong). The contributions analyzed US BMD plans (Zhu Mingquan, Andrew Lichterman) and raised concerns about the impact on arms control and non-proliferation (Ye Ru'an). One focus was on the consequences for North-East Asia (Randall Forsberg) and Japanese reactions to theater missile defense (Hiro Umebayashi). Potential alternatives were also discussed at the conference: concepts for diplomacy first and alternative security visions in North-East Asia (Samsung Lee, Tim Savage and Wade Huntley) and models for missile control and disarmament (Randy Rydell). Mark Smith analyzes the current state and efficiency of the Missile Technology Control Regime.

Even in the darkest times of world politics there are hopeful signs that provide a little light. Some of them are mentioned in the news section, such as the protest days against space militarization, combined with protests against the war in Afghanistan which saw tens of thousands of people demonstrating in Europe and the US (Bruce Gagnon). Increasingly NGOs focus and join activities against space weapons (Karina Wood, Matthias Karadi, Götz Neuneck). The resistance against missile defense and space weapons can serve as catalyzers for cooperation between governments and NGOs (Gert Harigel, NGO Committee). The Petition for a Missile Freeze could serve as a nucleus for future activities.

Jürgen Scheffran, March 2, 2002