A World Gone Mad - New York Times
The New York Times

July 31, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

A World Gone Mad
By
BOB HERBERT

As if the war in Iraq and the battles between Israel and its neighbors were
not frightening enough, now comes word of a development in Pakistan that may
well be the harbinger of a much greater catastrophe.

Over the past few years, Pakistan has been hard at work building a powerful
new plutonium reactor that when completed will be able to produce enough
fuel
to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.

This is happening at the same time that the Bush administration is pushing
hard for final Congressional approval of a nonmilitary nuclear cooperation
deal
with Pakistan's rival, India, that would in fact enhance India's bomb-making
capacity. The deal would enable India to free up its own stocks of nuclear
fuel to the extent that it could expand its nuclear weapons production from
about seven warheads a year to perhaps 50.

Yes, Virginia, the world is going mad.

Pakistan's initiative, which in a few years could increase its bomb-making
capacity twentyfold, was first reported last week by The Washington Post.
Experts
at the Institute for Science and International Security, after analyzing the
program, concluded that "South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race
that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons or,
at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material."

There is no way to overstate the potential danger of an accelerated nuclear
arms race in South Asia. Breeding nukes willy-nilly is an invitation to
Armageddon.
Pakistan, for those who need to be reminded, is where Osama bin Laden and
his henchmen are thought to be hiding. It's also the home of Abdul Qadeer
Khan,
the pied piper of proliferation (now under house arrest) who provided
crucial nuclear materials and expertise to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Representative Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who led the
opposition to the deal with India, told me he was surprised by the subdued
reaction
to the news about Pakistan's reactor.

"You would have thought that a firestorm would break out," he said. "As a
nation, we should be very afraid if Pakistan can come up with a twentyfold
increase
in the amount of nuclear weapons materials that it can manufacture. The
greatest fear we have is of a bomb slipping into the hands of a terrorist
group
- and we know that Al Qaeda is in Pakistan - and then having it moved toward
the Middle East, or put on a ship headed to an American port."

Mr. Markey, who is co-chairman of a bipartisan House task force on
nonproliferation, noted that the White House had long been aware of Pakistan
's plutonium-production
reactor but had kept that knowledge from Congress and the American public.
Why? To what end? Does the administration not understand the truly
horrifying
stakes involved in this deplorable spread of nuclear adventurism?

"This is not just about Pakistan, or Pakistan and India," said Mr. Markey.
"What impact will this have on China, which is looking at what India might
do?
What impact will it have on Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, being put on trial at the U.N., with sanctions
being asked by the
United States?"

(Neither India nor Pakistan are signers of the treaty.)

Common sense should tell you that thundering along the road to ever more
nuclear weapons in ever shakier hands is madness, the global equivalent to
driving
drunk at ever higher speeds. Does anyone think China will sit quietly by as
India and Pakistan develop the capacity to outpace it in the production of
nukes?

Does anyone doubt that at some point, if the spread of nuclear weapons is
not vigorously suppressed, a bomb will end up in the hands of a freak who
has
no other intention in the world than to use it?

John F. Kennedy, in a televised address to the nation in July 1963, said: "I
ask you to stop and think for a moment what it would mean to have nuclear
weapons
in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and
unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world.
There
would be no rest for anyone then, no stability, no real security, and no
chance of effective disarmament."

There was a time when the top leaders of the United States understood that
we should be moving toward fewer nukes on the planet, not an exponential,
suicidal
increase in these worst of all weapons.

Possted by Miriam V.