As the world hyperventilates over today’s successful satellite launch by the DPRK, absolutely no attention whatsoever has been paid to far far more dangerous and unambiguously nuclear weapons related launches in the last ten days by the US (Nov14) and Pakistan, and to a launch by South Korea that received media attention at all only when postponed from last week to 2013. The double-standard is not only breathtaking, but dangerous.
A completely successful launch by the US of a Minuteman-III, a rocket designed only to be a nuclear weapons delivery vehicle, attracted only a dozen or so dedicated protestors at the gates of Vandenberg Air-force base.
The US and Russia maintain thousands of warheads on high alert all the time, able to be launched not after weeks of preparation as the DPRK had to, but in seconds.
Still more recently, Pakistan performed what it called a ‘training test’ (ie, considered ‘routine’) of a Nodong-Derived Ghauri missile, designed solely for nuking Indian cities. This ‘training test’, carried out in what is beyond doubt the worlds most dangerous nuclear flashpoint, attracted minimal attention.
The DPRK’s agonizingly hard-won seeming success at putting a primitive satellite into orbit, and its dozen or less tiny nuclear warheads do not give it an increment in delivery capability though in time it could do so. It already has some delivery capability in the Nodong missile. However, the UNHA satellite-launcher is NOT particularly suitable for nuclear weapons delivery, as it takes literally weeks to launch, and needs perfect launch conditions.
Meanwhile, while the DPRKs miniscule nuclear arsenal is not especially good news, just how should we look at the continuing ability of the US and Russia to launch thousands of warheads in less than a minute, and to render the planet uninhabitable in less than an hour?
And just how should we look at the growing and unbelievably dangerous nuclear capabilities of India and Pakistan, now quite capable of incinerating each other and causing up to a billion deaths from famine in the ensuing ‘nuclear autumn’?
More attention needs to be paid to the real nuclear dangers and in particular to those posed by those who really truly have the continuing ability to end the world as we know it. By failing to give our attention to the real nuclear danger we put the continuance of civilization and even the human species in doubt.
John Hallam
PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT/CPACS HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT
