Madam, - Martyn Turner's cartoon of October 11th, depicting the CEO of the "Star wars missile and defense Industries Inc" in a blissful mood at the reports of a North Korean nuclear bomb test as it will bring "billions more dropping into our bank accounts", exposes the reality behind the global rush to mutually assured destruction.
Apart from the colossal investment in the new generation of mini-nuclear weaponry such as those designed for "bunker-busting", it is costing the US taxpayer more than $18 million a day just to maintain its existing arsenal of nuclear weaponry. This level of expenditure denies US citizens decent social, education and health services which could be among the best in the world if these millions were diverted to serve human needs.
Even though the World Court ruled in 1996 that the use of nuclear weapons was illegal under international and humanitarian law, the Bush administration, in its 2002 National Security Review, asserted an unilateral security policy which included counter-proliferation and pre-emptive strikes using a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Is it any wonder that other countries follow the US example? North Korea is the latest, even though most of its 23 million people are on the verge of starvation. There is now an expectation that Japan, already a "para-nuclear state" with a stockpile of weapons-useable plutonium and a nuclear processing industry, will become the next nuclear-armed power.
So the nuclear race continues with Japan rearming against North Korea, India and Pakistan vying with each other in their possession of a nuclear arsenal while Iran now wants to counter the nuclear might of Israel.
This renewed nuclear arms race is a madness which threatens the human race. Possession of such weapons ensures not security but further insecurity, while arms manufacturers become the most profitable companies in the world. It seems that poverty , starvation and disease are the prices we are willing to pay for the development of these immoral and illegal weapons.
- Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER, NGO Peace Alliance, Phibsborough Road, Dublin 7.