Date Published: 03/31/10

ARMS RACE CONFLICT AND DIPLOMACY By Niran Abitogun

The proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world has made the entire globe potentially unsafe for human race. Apart from the existing 9 nations with nuclear weapons one or two countries have decided to join the club in spite of the spirited efforts and pressure mounted by the powerful nations and the international organisations to discourage these countries from embarking on the development of the deadly weapons. Iran for instance refused all entreaties, though the country’s leader maintained that the purpose of the development was to generate power. However, with the current political crisis in the Middle East region Iran has no moral right to deceive and confuse the entire world of its intention. Poverty stricken North Korea is another country which had earlier accepted to dismantle her nuclear weapons but instead continue to build and stockpile more of the weapons to the amazement of the international community.

Also if we should consider the activities of the developed nation as regards the development of nuclear weapons one would realise that much efforts are needed from them to bring about peace in the world. Most of these countries defence budgets are not really reflecting their intentions to shield the world from destruction. In this year’s budget the US allocated a whopping $663.8billion to defence, out of which $130billion is meant to support overseas contingency operations primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was an increase of $20billion over that of 2009. In Britain the government voted £20billion to update her trident nuclear deterrent programme. China committed 6.3 percent if it’s total fiscal expenditure in 2009 to defence which translates to $70.2billion. Russia on the other hand allocated about $35billion out of this amount $14.8billion is for the purchase of weapons and military hardware for defence purpose.

With these records at hand, in 2009 there are well over 23,300 active nuclear warheads worldwide. Any nation can be tempted one day to unleash terror on the entire world like the history of Hitler Second World War. 

The constant need to limit arms race conflict has engaged the attention of the super powers.  The failure of the various non proliferation treaties NPT, as occasioned in the strategic arms limitation talks SALT I & SALT II, have woken the consciousness of the progressive world leaders to find solutions to the problems.  Coming on the heels of various resolutions from the United Nations general assembly diplomatic moves began in harness where world leaders agreed in principle on what should be done. Few days ago America and Russia presidents Obama and Medvedev, agreed to cut their country’s nuclear warheads by 10 percent over a period of 10years. At least this is a right step in the right direction if other nation would follow up and make the same sacrifice. Also when Medvedev visited France recently to strengthen privileged ties the need for disarmament was tabled between him and his host Sarkozy. The world must be freed from the expectation of war hanging over it if any meaningful development is expected to take place. For keeping the war drum alive the Iranian government has come under severe criticism from the international community with a call to put it on line of reasoning. There have been moves to impose sanctions and or to engage it on negotiation in order to persuade the leader to drop its tough stance. Apart from the pressure from America, Russia and china her traditional allies have joined the race to bring pressure on Iran. With the recent stand of Russia that if the sanctions to be imposed would not have a biting effects on the population then something can be done.                  

Arms build up is a reflection of the era of cold war. After the end of the first and second war the then world leaders wanted to put a check into what  led to the war and in particular to discourage any war monger like Hitler from further territorial ambition. The Berlin conference provided the platform where these positions were articulated. But no emphasis was laid on reducing arms and ammunitions hence the race to outwit one another started. The quest to acquire deadly weapons to deter others from attacking them became the other of the day. The balance of power or balance of terror changed the world political relationship which was belief could only survive based on ideology. The communist bloc led by the defunct Soviet Union engaged headlong the capitalist bloc under the United States of America. Along the political divides the peace of the world was threatened. In most cases it snowballed into major crisis such as the Vietnam War, Iran-Iraq war, south and North Korean war and many others. Though the developing nations wanted to maintain neutrality in the political arrangement by coming up with the non-aligned slogan in their political forum. The peripheral nature of these countries then and even till today makes the effectiveness of the bloc a myriad. The economies of the developing nations are tied to that of the developed ones. Decisions cannot be made without the inputs from the colonial masters and the nation’s individual interest took the centre stage. This sort of interference can be noticed in the recent regional economic integrations where decisions affecting the organisations are very difficult to reach. ECOWAS for instance is by principle under the influence of Anglo and Franco phones burdens. In other parts of the world the Organisation of American states (OAS), achieved little in its Latin America free trade area, (LAFTA), programme. So also for the East Africa’s economic integration (ECA), they all failed to make appreciable impact on the economic development of their regions because of unequal political and economic relationship with the developed nations.

In 2003 when the British, America and NATO forces invaded Iraq of Sadaam Hussein reasons being that the leader was stockpiling weapons of mass destructions; the whole world woke up into another political crisis even following the removal of sadaam peace has not returned to that part of the world. The war was internalised with all the ethnic groups at one another throats. Like Iran a nuclear power Iraq would definitely heightened the tension in the Middle East and the world. Sadaam may wake up one day to attack Israel and other neighbours to change the power equation in the Middle East.

The frightening rate of poverty and corruption in the developing nations mostly in Africa have made it virtually impossible for them to constitute themselves into threats to tilt the world order. Most if not all are technologically backward that they can’t even extract the mineral deposits in the land without the assistance of the countries with advanced technology. So the idea of developing nuclear weapons is luxury to them. South Africa dismantled its own nuclear weapons to respect the NPT while Nigeria’s stance of developing nuclear for the purpose power generation has not been able to match its words with actions since three years ago.

A free world is germane to the economic and political stability of the human race where peace would be the bed rock and threshold for togetherness and developments. Hence the question of disarmament is as old as the stockpiling itself. Right from the era of Henry Kissinger shuttle diplomacy most especially to the Middle East to the recent campaigns by Mrs Hillary Clinton, to free the world from the clutches of weapons of mass destruction. No number of talks would be too small or much to press home the need for peace in the world. In any conflict resolution principles those who started the crisis must equally be part of the solution. The diplomatic moves by America, Russia, Britain and other nations is the only way to get the nations of the world to sleep together and work together in peace. The concept of two nation-solution championed by America and Russia opens another phase into how understanding between two former opposing  nations can work out better ways to disarmament which all other nations can follow suit.

There are many critical issues facing the globe, such as natural disaster, much talked about climate change, hunger and poverty in the developing world requires prompt attention and concerted efforts of all nations to tackle instead of wasting resources on making what is not productive to human race. Weapons proliferation has contributed to the crisis in the world rather than to make peace achievable.

Niran Abitogun, writes from Abuja.