By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Hans Blix should not be an optimist. Having spent the bulk of his career chasing after dangerous weapons — many of them nuclear — and having to negotiate the walls thrown up in his path while trying to do so, his work has been nothing if not difficult. But Blix, who gave his talk, “From a Cold War to a Cold Peace, Time for a Revival of Disarmament?” to a packed house at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall on October 18, had something of a positive, if guarded, view of the state of the world right now.
“Areas of peace in the world have been expanding,” said Blix. Blix was the lead weapons inspector for the United Nations, and thus led the search for weapons of mass destruction throughout Iraq in the run-up to the invasion by U.S. forces in 2003. During his speech, he cited the possibility of wars between members of the European Union or Nordic states, or even the U.S. and Mexico as “unthinkable.” And in the E.U., he said, “Many soldiers are trained for peacekeeping rather than territorial defense.”
Today, he said, tensions arise in many countries due to issues such as exchange rates, dumping prices, and pollution.
“[But] you do not go to war on such tensions,” he said.
Blix’s visit was sponsored in part by the university’s Department of Scandinavian Studies, the UW Alumni Association and Hillel at the UW.
Referring to recent Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Blix said “We must wake up and face a second inconvenient truth.” That truth is the realization that in the past decade, “the outlook for peace became much less likely.”
Since 1991, when President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to a withdrawal of nuclear weapons, there have been some successes in doing so, but efforts have also been stymied.
China recently shot down one of its own weather satellites in a weapons test as it modernizes its own army, and the war in Iraq has exacerbated tensions in that region as well. In addition, Russia has threatened to put nuclear weapons in space if the U.S. does so first, and then there is the issue of Iran.
In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on October 21, Vice President Dick Cheney said: “Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The [U.N.] Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time….
“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
While he does believe that Iran should not be allowed to build nuclear weapons, Blix said that confronting Iran’s leaders the way the U.S. and some allies have done is not working.
“I think it would be better to hold up the carrots, like with North Korea,” he said.
Following a supposedly failed nuclear test last September, North Korea began decommissioning its nuclear facilities. The country’s nuclear program is expected to be fully decommissioned by the end of the year. No military force was used.
“It has been reckless to talk about the use of force before they’ve gotten to these processes,” Blix said.
On October 3, however, an Associated Press story noted that Iran would likely have 3,000 uranium centrifuges running by the end of October.
“Nuclear experts say that 3,000 centrifuges represents a key atomic threshold,” Ilan Berman, vice president for policy on the American Foreign Policy Council told the subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia in the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs. “With that number of centrifuges spinning continuously for one year, a nation can generate enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon. Based on these projections, and barring any technical glitches or other unforeseen eventualities, Iran will have enough fissile material to field a nuclear weapon by sometime next fall at the latest.”
President Bush’s recent remarks that Iran’s having the bomb could initiate World War III has had Israel scrambling in the past few weeks to convince all members of the Security Council, including China and Russia, (both of whom have been assisting Iran in its nuclear efforts), to put pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly assured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Russia would not allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, but that has not caused the U.S. to back down on its pressure. In late October, the Bush Administration declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its Quds arm as a terrorist organization, which would bar corporations that do business with Iran from doing so with the U.S.
Blix said that while China and Russia have not been willing to promote economic sanctions on Iran, their difference of opinion with the other Security Council states has been due to wanting to find a different approach to the issue.
“The best approach is to make the states not feel like they need to have nuclear weapons,” he said.
Blix drew a clear distinction between the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the enrichment of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
“I am as much in favor of civilian nuclear power… as I am against nuclear for bombs,” he said, acknowledging this view might be unpopular in some circles that appreciate his lifelong career spent attempting to stop the proliferation of weapons.
Issues surrounding nuclear power — operational safety, waste disposal, and keeping facilities secure — are major concerns, he said, but in his mind the benefits outweigh the risks, particularly with the looming specter of global warming.
“One of the big problems is the automobile,” he said, “Gas is convenient.”
Once breakthroughs can be made in battery and hydrogen power technologies, Blix said, nuclear energy, which produces “a lot of electricity,” would be indispensable. And with a reduction in reliance on oil from unstable countries, nuclear power could make the world a more peaceful place.
“Exaggerated demand for oil and gas is dangerous for security,” he said.