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By Dr Abdul Matin.
The president of the United States of America, often described as the most powerful leader of the world, can hardly perform any of the functions vested upon him by the US Constitution without the approval of the Senate. He is, however, empowered to order a nuclear strike. Out of frustration, President Lyndon B. Johnson once said that the only power he had got was that of the bomb, but “Alas! I can’t use it.”
President Harry S. Truman was the only US president to have allowed the US military to drop two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the World War II. The two nuclear explosions were enough to force Japan to surrender on August 15, 1945.
It is reported that president Bill Clinton misplaced the nuclear code card, popularly known as the “biscuit,” which allows the US president to access his “nuclear briefcase” containing the codes to order a nuclear attack. The card was actually missing for months. This was disclosed by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Hugh Shelton in his memoir, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.
The "nucler briefcase," in its present form, was developed during the Cuban Crisis when President Kennedy wanted to have direct control over the nuclear weapons. The mode of operation of the code card is a state secret. The card contains some numbers to open the briefcase and allows the president to use the nuclear codes.
The briefcase is carried by a trusted presidential aide who accompanies the president everywhere. He stands next to the president on all occasions, walks close to him and sits nearby in his car, plane or helicopter. The briefcase is transferred from one president to another on the day of inauguration at noon when the official transfer of power takes place.
Clinton was not the only president to misplace the "biscuit." President Carter had left the code card in a pocket of his jacket which he had sent for dry-cleaning. The card was missing for a while after the assassination attempt on President Reagan, who carried it in his wallet. President Ford once left the briefcase along with his aide on a plane during a visit to Paris.
President Carter did not allow his aide to sleep in his farm in Georgia during his visits. The aide used to sleep in motels with the briefcase miles away from his farm. The senior Bush once left his aide in a tennis court. The aide had to hire a taxi to follow him. Clinton also made his aide run after him for fifteen minutes, carrying the heavy briefcase, when he had left him in the middle of a road after attending the 50-year anniversary ceremony of Nato in Washington in 1999.
Such incidents, though amusing, show how the nuclear code card or the nuclear briefcase went beyond the reach of the US president temporarily. Can we assume that these incidents at least reduced the probability of a US nuclear strike during the periods the devices were missing? In that case, can we not think of a world without the nuclear code cards, the briefcases and the bombs?
Thank God, the code card has not been used since its invention. The atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped by an executive order of the US president. What will happen if, God forbid, the code card is ever used? In the words of President Jimmy Carter: "In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second - more people killed in the first few hours than all the wars of history put together."
Will the survivors of a nuclear war be lucky? No, as President John F. Kennedy said: "For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors." The actual condition of the survivors was more aptly described by Chairman Nikita Khrushchev of the former Soviet Union, who said: "The survivors would envy the dead."
The consequences of a nuclear war being such, it is unfortunate that the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons has been increasing gradually in spite of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Besides the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, at least three countries, India, Pakistan and North Korea, have confirmed their nuclear weapons capability. Israel, believed to possess a large nuclear arsenal, neither confirms nor denies allegations regarding possession of nuclear weapons.
It is difficult to predict the number of the aspiring nuclear weapon states. With every addition of a new member to the so-called "nuclear club,' the world comes closer to the brink of a nuclear war.
The present anti-terrorism drive around the world has virtually pushed the goal of a total and global nuclear disarmament to the rear seat. Both the drives deserve equal priority and should proceed simultaneously and vigorously. The consequences of nuclear proliferation will be worse in case some nuclear weapons or dirty bombs fall into the hands of terrorists trying to capture state power in some countries.
It is now obvious that NPT or CTBT has not helped much in preventing nuclear proliferation. Many countries believe that the two treaties are discriminatory. The world will not be safe as long as nuclear weapons exist, no matter which countries possess them. It is, therefore, time to put new efforts for a total and global nuclear disarmament.
The five permanent members of the Security Council must take the initiative and start talks with other nuclear weapon states on this issue in order to make the world a safer place to live, for them as well as for others. They must move fast and have a target date for total elimination of all nuclear weapons.
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